Craft (Desert Getaway) delivers a breezy second whodunit featuring Palm Springs investigative duo Dante O’Donnell and Jazz Friendly. Dante’s life is looking up: he’s madly in love with his new boyfriend, and as concierge for a vacation rental company, he’s just leased a guesthouse on a U.S. ambassador’s estate to celebrity romance author Maude Movay, who plans to hunker down for an entire month while she finishes her latest manuscript. Dante’s efforts to learn more about his reclusive guest are cut short when Jazz, a PI who befriended Dante after helping clear his name in a murder case, discovers Maude’s strangled corpse on the grounds of the estate. Once again, the two join forces to ferret out the culprit. The stakes are raised when Jazz’s daughter is abducted during their investigation, leading the men to wonder if Maude’s murder had more to do with them than they initially realized. Craft deepens his protagonists’ rapport considerably, and complements the impressive character development with a brain-teasing mystery. Readers will hope to hear more from Dante and Jazz soon. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

Bestseller Scott’s frothy latest (after Regrets Only) drops readers into the rarified world of 34-year-old playboy Peter Frank. Each year, Peter’s mother throws a clambake for the upper crust of New Jersey’s Cape May. This year’s event includes a bombshell—Peter’s impromptu wedding to family friend Tilly Danforth. The news comes as a particular shock to three women on the guest list: tennis star Maya Romero, Peter’s girlfriend; wedding planner Catherine Farr, his high school ex; and Leanne Gladstone, the aunt of his son from a previous relationship. When Tilly is found crushed to death beneath a chandelier, Catherine, who fancies herself an amateur sleuth, starts poking around. Before long, she learns that Peter’s potential investment in her business has placed her at the top of the suspect list, with Maya’s jealousy and Leanne’s entanglement in a custody battle with Peter putting them close behind. To avoid scandal and clear their names, the three women band together to solve Tilly’s murder. Scott keeps things fleet-footed and effervescent, allowing the investigation to float by on a cloud of petty betrayals and vicarious consumption. The result is ideal poolside reading. Agent: Holly Root, Root Literary. (July)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

The owner of a Massachusetts community theater becomes a gumshoe when one of her actors drops dead in Lyerly’s promising if undercooked debut. Reginald Thornton IV may have enough talent to land the lead role in the Kaleidoscope Theater’s production of Murder in a Teacup, but he’s so arrogant and cruel that his costars take outsize delight in rehearsing his climactic death scene each night. Reginald’s behavior, plus the stresses of opening a production, cause theater owner Ellie Marlowe’s Tourette syndrome to flare up. Still, Ellie takes no pleasure when Reginald dies for real on opening night—she believes that even someone as sleazy as him deserves justice. Investigators label Reginald’s death a heart attack, but Ellie isn’t convinced, and her lifelong friend, local police chief Bill Starlin, shares her skepticism. Sifting through a long list of suspects, the pair comes to believe Reginald was poisoned; when someone attacks Reginald’s wife, their investigation gains a greater sense of urgency. With a bit of polish, this would be a bona fide page-turner, but by withholding crucial information until the final pages and repeating a few too many plot points, the author fumbles the bag. Here’s hoping Lyerly’s next outing is more finely tuned. Agent: Adam Chromy, Movable Type Management. (July)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

Fram (The Bright Lands) touches on generational curses, anti-queer bigotry, and religious trauma in this tense, supernaturally tinged locked-room thriller. By the time Alyssa Wright brings her new husband, Toby, and his feminine-presenting seven-year-old son, Luca, to her family’s isolated Texas compound, the mood is already jittery. Alyssa’s televangelist grandfather, Jerome, has been making increasingly dire end-of-days predictions, and someone has been splattering cryptic threats in vivid red paint across the main house’s bedroom doors. When Jerome is discovered stabbed on the roof just as a powerful storm cuts off communication with the outside world, Alyssa’s relatives turn their suspicions toward Toby. As he struggles to prove his innocence, and to keep Luca out of whatever nefarious plan the Wrights seem to be hatching for him, long-repressed memories of Toby’s late sister start to surface. Meanwhile, Luca claims to see a ghost stalking the halls. Fram lends authenticity to the behaviors and motivations of his sprawling cast, keeping readers glued to the page as the complex plot unfurls—though certain late-stage reveals don’t feel entirely fair. Still, this ambitious swing for the fences connects more often than it misses. Agent: Melissa Danaczko, Stuart Krichevsky Literary. (July)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

Bestseller Quinn follows The Diamond Eye with a stellar historical mystery centered on a group of women living together in a Washington, D.C., boardinghouse. The action opens on Thanksgiving 1956 at Briarwood House, where a corpse lies bleeding in one of the attic apartments, the police have just arrived, and the tenants have gathered in the living room to await questioning. The narrative then rewinds four and a half years, to when widowed 30-something Grace March arrives at Briarwood. She meets Fliss, a harried new mother; Bea, a former pro baseball player; Claire, a file clerk for Sen. Margaret Chase Smith; Nora, an employee of the National Archives; and Arlene, a secretary for the House Un-American Activities Committee who’s fully embraced the hysterical rhetoric of her boss, Sen. Joseph McCarthy. As the women bond, clash, and pursue various romantic entanglements, they remain committed to holding weekly dinner parties in Grace’s room. As Quinn gradually steers the narrative back toward the violent opening scene, she elegantly explores issues of race, class, and gender, and brings the paranoid atmosphere of McCarthy-era Washington to vivid life. For Quinn’s fans, this is a must. Agent: Kevan Lyon, Marsal Lyon Literary. (July)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

Allen (All or Nothing) takes readers inside the mind of a serial killer in this ambitious if ultimately disappointing thriller. The lead character, a Miami pizza delivery man who insists victims call him “Periwinkle” (he leaves the flowers at his crime scenes as a calling card) is introduced in the midst of slaughtering domestic abuser Eduardo Gomez in 2001. Like Dexter Morgan before him, Allen’s “hunter” operates under a strict moral code, only killing people he believes have violated the social contract—an adulterer, a crooked cop, a pedophile. As the hunter’s bodies pile up, police close in on him, but he continues to taunt them with phone calls. Meanwhile, he returns home after each murder to his children and argues with his pregnant wife about baby names, considering whether he might kill her, too. In flashbacks, Allen digs into the hunter’s difficult childhood, during which he was bullied for being overweight. Allen aims for something lyrical and elevated, and while he occasionally achieves a kind of hypnotic grace, the overall effect fails to make much of an impression. Ponderous prose (“Slow and joyless are the footfalls of Eduardo”) doesn’t help. Allen’s reach exceeds his grasp. Agent: Eleanor Jackson, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

British botanist Saffron Everleigh juggles research, romance, and murder in the diverting third installment of Khavari’s historical mystery series (after A Botanist’s Guide to Flowers and Fatalities). In 1923 London, Saffron has turned her back on the comforts of aristocratic life to work in a lab, where she’s routinely condescended to by her male colleagues. She harbors a crush on fellow scientist Alexander Ashton, whose brother, Adrian, has been named a suspect in the recent poisoning death of a Russian researcher. At Alexander’s urging, Saffron looks into the killing in hopes of clearing Adrian’s name. Meanwhile, she wards off the advances of Nick Hale, her best friend’s older brother who’s just arrived in the city. When one of the Russian scientist’s colleagues is also murdered, Saffron infiltrates the secretive lab where the pair worked and discovers that Alexander and Nick have been hiding crucial information from her all along. Though Khavari throws too many characters into the mix and the mystery’s momentum stalls in the middle, she brings everything together with a rewarding final act. It’s a solid entry in a dependable series. (June)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

A British war photographer travels to Cambodia seeking to escape a personal tragedy, only to become entangled in the region’s criminal underworld, in Herat’s ambitious debut. Joseph “Fearless” Nightingale, who is reeling from the death of his pregnant wife, heads out drinking with his longtime friend and travel companion, Alyosha, shortly after they arrive in Cambodia. Their night takes a perilous turn when Fearless is drugged by strangers, then left for dead. Song, an 18-year-old Cambodian woman enslaved at the apartment complex where Fearless is staying, discovers his limp body and nurses him back to health. Sensing that Fearless might help her and her twin sister, Sovanna, who is enslaved in a nearby villa, Song sneaks out of the complex and leaves behind a videotape for him, which offers evidence of a sex trafficking ring involving several international power brokers, including Alyosha. As Fearless figures out what to do next, Song frees Sovanna by setting her villa ablaze, triggering a violent retaliation that touches each of the novel’s main characters. Herat impresses on his first time out, with well-shaded characters and gripping suspense, though things start to feel overstuffed by the final act. Still, this is worth seeking out. (June)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

Chavez (Before She Finds Me) blends simmering suspense and domestic drama in this slow-burning thriller. Sixteen years ago, when waitress Leyna Clarke was 12, her 16-year-old sister, Grace, disappeared from their home with her boyfriend, Adam Duran. The mothers of the missing pair blamed one another, and soon launched into a feud that took over their lives. Leyna ditched that toxic atmosphere for Reno, while continuing to hold out hope that she’d eventually find Grace alive. One sweltering July afternoon, a woman who looks like Grace walks into the café where Leyna works. When a stunned Leyna starts asking her questions, the woman flees; a few days later, Adam’s brother, Dominic, calls Leyna to say a stranger has been poking around their old neighborhood, asking questions about Grace and Adam. Leyna returns home to investigate, reuniting with her mother, Meredith, and encountering Adam and Dominic’s mother, Olivia, who still blames Leyna’s family for the disappearance. As a dangerous forest fire crackles nearby, Leyna uncovers family secrets that shed new light on what happened to her sister. Chavez keeps the pace slack, building perhaps a touch too sluggishly to a resolution that nevertheless satisfies. Patient readers will be rewarded. Agent: Peter Steinberg, UTA. (July)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

Edgar winner Lansdale excels in his savagely funny 13th case for East Texas PIs Hap Collins and Leonard Pine (after The Elephant of Surprise). When Minnie Polson consults with Hap and his wife, Brett, about the blackmail she’s been subject to, the duo’s off-color jokes dissuade her from hiring them. Hap brushes off the encounter, but when Minnie dies in a suspicious house fire, he and Brett feel compelled to investigate. With Leonard’s help, they turn up evidence of a complicated insurance money scheme, with suspects including Minnie’s missing daughter, Alice, and Minnie’s estranged husband, Al, who left her for a gold-digging stripper named Earline. As the detectives tease out the motivations of each of Minnie’s relatives, they run afoul of a ruthless crime ring and have little choice but to employ the services of mercenaries Vanilla and Jim Bob. Blood-splattered action and a welcome spoonful of irreverent humor make this a surefire hit. It’s a high-water mark for the series. Agent: Danny Baror, Baror International. (July)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink