Academy Award winner Caine adds to his résumé with this suspenseful debut. When a metal box containing weapons-grade uranium is discovered at a dump in Stepney, England, the race is on among various London gangs to get their hands on it. Afraid of the havoc a briefcase-size nuke could wreak, New Scotland Yard assigns Harry Taylor, a 45-year-old, Kipling-quoting old-school DCI, to retrieve the material. Alongside right-hand man John Williams, sniper Iris Davies, and nuclear expert Carol Walker, Harry follows a trail of clues that takes his team from the posh Eaton Square digs of a Sondheim-loving drug lord to the Versailles-like lair of a Russian oligarch in Barbados. Along the way, Caine orchestrates plenty of shoot-outs, ambushes, and pulse-quickening standoffs. He doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but he brings to the proceedings a Len Deightonesque delight in depicting interservice squabbling, an Ian Fleming–like appreciation for outsized villains, a fascination with atomic age minutiae, and tough-guy dialogue that absolutely crackles. This is the kind of well-oiled thriller that Caine made his name starring in. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 10/13/2023 | Details & Permalink

Documentarian Signe Gates untangles the details of her kidnapping in this harrowing standalone from Grant (Into the Storm). Two years ago, Signe was abducted and forced to watch the murder of one of her sources, though most other details of the two-day ordeal remain hazy. Recently, however, she’s been receiving disturbing videos that the senders claim are from her abduction. When she gets a cryptic text from a former source promising to reveal who abducted her if she can solve the murders of a climber and a camper in Yosemite National Park, Signe heads to Yosemite with FBI agent Cole Banner to get to work. As the pair hike through the woods, Signe comes to suspect that Cole may have been one of her attackers. She must balance that suspicion with a race against time to solve the murders and arrive at a designated meeting spot coordinated by her source. The plot clips along at a satisfying pace, and Grant pulls off several successful surprises, though she flubs the final twist. There’s also a significant amount of sexual violence, some of which feels gratuitous. Still, for those who can stomach it, this offers a reliable thrill. Agent: Elizabeth Winnick Rubinstein, McIntosh & Otis. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 10/13/2023 | Details & Permalink

Gagnon (All Dressed Up) sets this predictable thriller at a remote winery on the Oregon coast. Fifteen years earlier, five college friends threw a party on the winery’s grounds. After plenty of booze-fueled revelry and argument, one of them—the vibrant Vanessa—went missing and was presumed dead. Now, Emily Fischer, the last person to see Vanessa alive, is a disgruntled writer on a middling sitcom who sees selling a screenplay as her only hope of rising out of mediocrity. When Emily spots Vanessa (or possibly her doppelgänger) at an L.A. coffee shop, she’s inspired to build her film around the mystery of Vanessa’s disappearance. With surprisingly little resistance, Emily convinces Vanessa’s cousin Brittany, plus old friends Lydia and Paige, to return to the now-shuttered winery for a reunion, with the ulterior motives of researching her screenplay and determining whether her coffee shop encounter is worth investigating further. After the women arrive, violence ensues. Gagnon dawdles on the way to a fairly obvious conclusion, with scenes from Emily’s script alternating with her narration of current events. The characters’ motivations are flimsy enough to flutter in the breeze. Little here is memorable. Agent: Taylor Haggerty, Root Literary. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 10/13/2023 | Details & Permalink

The sturdy 22nd installment in Poyer’s series featuring Navy admiral Dan Lenson (after 2021’s Arctic Sea) sees Lenson taking his post as the new superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy. At first, Dan’s up for the challenge of rehabilitating the academy, which has been battered by falling applications, sky-high expenditures, and reports of sexual assault. Toss in the suspicious death of a senior midshipman and an impending hurricane, and his problems begin to seem insurmountable. Flashbacks to 40 years earlier recount Dan’s senior year at the academy, during which he was drawn into the investigation of a classmate’s apparent suicide, and provide context for his present-day strategies as a military leader and his approach to the midshipman investigation. Poyer’s irrepressible nostalgia for his own plebe days in Annapolis are a feature, not a bug: the flashback sections feel lived-in and immediate. Elsewhere, Poyer makes up for a lack of missiles, torpedoes, and enemy ships by generating top-notch suspense from the murder case and impending storm. This long-running naval series continues full-steam ahead. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 10/13/2023 | Details & Permalink

Mississippi sheriff Colt Harper has his loyalties tested in the standout third series entry from Thompson (after 2020’s Old Anger). When two fishermen discover a rotting corpse with a bullet wound in the back of its head, Harper is called to the scene. The murder victim is quickly IDed as California resident Lamont Lamb, thanks to the driver’s license in his wallet. Harper and his deputy, Molly McDonough, set out to learn more about Lamb, what he was doing in Mississippi, and whether the shooting might be the work of the same person who recently attacked and robbed two other local men. The inquiry gets more complicated when a records check reveals that Lamb belonged to an L.A. street gang and had a lengthy rap sheet, including arrests for drug dealing and assault. As Harper investigates further, he slowly comes to suspect that the crime spree might be the work of his former Marine colleague Flip Wilson. Flashbacks to the first Gulf War flesh out Colt and Flip’s relationship, helping piece together Flip’s potential motives in the present. Admirers of S.A. Cosby and Ace Atkins will appreciate Thompson’s combination of hardboiled crime tropes and psychological depth. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 10/06/2023 | Details & Permalink

In Ryan’s gripping sequel to 2022’s A Death in Door County, Wisconsin cryptozoologist Morgan Carter chases down Bigfoot while recovering from the trauma of discovering that her former fiancé murdered her parents. Since that tragedy, Morgan has spent most of her time running Odds and Ends, a store selling trinkets and paperback murder mysteries, but she’s happy to volunteer her expertise when local police chief Jon Flanders asks for help on behalf of a colleague. Conservation warden Charlie Aberdeen is looking into a fatal attack on a hunter that one witness attributed to a Bigfoot-like creature. The discovery of a second victim increases the pressure on Aberdeen, and Carter, who is skeptical that Bigfoot exists, agrees to travel to the area and investigate pro bono. Ryan conjures a wonderfully spooky atmosphere as Carter risks her life in search of the truth, and expertly keeps readers in the dark about the perpetrator’s identity for most of the narrative. With a strong premise and smart characterizations, this series is well suited to a long run. Agent: Adam Chomroy, Movable Type Management. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 10/06/2023 | Details & Permalink

Laurie’s fizzy fifth cozy featuring Hamptons life coach Cat Cooper (after 2022’s Coached Red-Handed) sees Cat and her best friend, Gilley Gillespie, investigating the murder of a costume designer. After literally running away from her boyfriend’s marriage proposal, Cat seeks the support of Gilley in Texas, where he’s staying with his new boyfriend, Stuart Jacobs. A former Broadway costume designer, Stuart has been hired to create elaborate dresses for the Texas Rose Festival’s queen and her attendants. Not a full day of work passes before Stuart’s assistant designer, Broderick Carmichael, is found dead, and Broderick’s twin sister, Imani, is arrested by the overeager local police, who want to close the case before it threatens the economically vital festival. When Cat and Gilley, convinced of Imani’s innocence, set out to find the real culprit, their digging turns up additional crimes, including the theft of the festival queen’s jewels. The mystery plot sprawls a bit, but series fans who’ve invested in Cat and Gilley’s personal lives will find plenty of juicy developments to savor. This is good fun. Agent: Jim McCarthy, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 10/06/2023 | Details & Permalink

The seventh entry in Thompson’s Counterfeit Lady historical crime series (following 2022’s City of Fortune) is the best yet. In 1920, antihero Elizabeth Bates—an accomplished con artist who learned the tricks of the trade from her father—has devoted herself to helping the suffragettes’ campaign to get the 19th Amendment passed. The effort is at a turning point: although 35 states have approved the amendment, one more is still needed, and Tennessee, the only plausible prospect, seems likely to join the other Southern states in opposition. Bates travels to Nashville to offer the campaign whatever help she can, only to learn that her father is in the city as well, running a scheme to circumvent Prohibition by supplying drugstores with alcohol, which patrons can purchase with a prescription. With the Tennessee legislators divided over the women’s vote, Bates must use all her charm and ingenuity to get one state representative to support the cause. Luckily, her familiarity with scams helps her see through some of the shady political tactics being used to sway key votes. Thompson roots much of the narrative in historical fact (helpfully outlined in an afterword) and manages to maintain suspense despite the story’s foregone conclusion. This fiercely feminist historical adventure goes down smoothly. Agent: Nancy Yost, Nancy Yost Literary. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 10/06/2023 | Details & Permalink

Tokyo police detective Kyoichiro Kaga discovers an unsettling personal connection to a tricky murder case in the brilliantly twisty fourth entry in Higashino’s series (after 2022’s A Death in Tokyo). Kaga’s cousin, Shuhei Matsumiya, a detective with a separate division of the Tokyo police, suspects that two strangulation murders may be linked, despite no evidence of a connection between the victims. In the first, an unidentified homeless man was believed to have perished in a fire until an autopsy revealed smoke-free lungs and strangulation marks on his neck. A few weeks later, cleaning contractor Michiko Oshitani’s decomposing remains are discovered in a spartan Tokyo apartment hundreds of miles from her home with apparent strangulation marks around her neck. Though the crimes are outside Kaga’s jurisdiction, Matsumiya seeks his cousin’s advice. Soon afterward, Matsumiya’s colleagues discover a calendar in the apartment where Oshitani died with phrases that hearken back to the death of Kaga’s mother more than a decade ago. She’d left Kaga’s father long before that to pursue another man, and among her effects was a note with the same phrases as the calendar, and in the same handwriting. Higashino metes out the plot’s surprises slowly, prioritizing Kaga’s emotional response to the investigation. This poignant fair-play whodunit is sure to thrill fans of golden age detective fiction. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 10/06/2023 | Details & Permalink

Cook’s subpar 14th outing for married medical examiners Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery (after 2022’s Night Shift) makes the baffling choice to reveal that former Navy SEAL Hank Roberts has killed financial adviser Sean O’Brien on behalf of a company called Oncology Diagnostics in its opening pages, effectively draining the ensuing plot of suspense. From there, O’Brien’s body makes its way to the autopsy table of Montgomery, New York City’s chief medical examiner, with law enforcement suggesting his death was a suicide. With the help of pathology resident Ryan Sullivan, however, Montgomery realizes that O’Brien has, in fact, been murdered. Sullivan soon learns of six other recent cases in Montgomery’s office in which a presumed suicide showed signs of foul play and begins to investigate the links between them before turning up dead of an apparent suicide himself. Montgomery is sure that Sullivan, too, has been killed, and she launches her own probe; Stapleton gets involved after a high-profile news reporter and her husband turn up dead in an apparent murder-suicide and links start to appear between that case and his wife’s. Cook alternates the investigations with scenes that shine a light on the crooked inner workings of Oncology Diagnostics, which pays Roberts and other ex-military killers to eliminate people who threaten its profits. Cook’s characters are paper-thin, and much of the plotting is predictable. Only the author’s most devoted fans will find this worth their time. Agent: Erica Silverman, Trident Media. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 10/06/2023 | Details & Permalink