Mosse juggles two tales, two centuries apart in the fascinating if uneven conclusion to her Joubert Family series (after The Ghost Ship). In 1688, Suzanne Joubert, a Huguenot refugee, lands in Cape Colony, Southern Africa, after fleeing rampaging Catholic soldiers in Provence. Suzanne desperately wants to discover what became of her ancestor, Louise, who captained her own vessel to Africa, disrupting slaver ships before she vanished somewhere near the middle of the continent. After some lucky finds and numerous near-death experiences, Suzanne is shipwrecked off the coast of England, where she records her discoveries. Then, in 1862, Isabelle Lepard sets out to uncover the remainder of the story—including the fate of Louise’s lover, who was born a woman but passed as a man—so she can write a historical account and open a Joubert Family Reading Room in London. The motivations for Mosse’s heroines feel rather contrived, as do shoehorned-in recaps of the Jouberts’ family history (“Forgive me for repeating what you know, gran’mère, but it helps me to order my thoughts”). Still, series fans will appreciate the vivid historical detail, headlong pace, and gratifyingly feminist finale. Flaws aside, this sends out Mosse’s saga on a high note. Agent: Maria Rejt, Soho Agency. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 10/25/2024 | Details & Permalink

Baldacci seamlessly blends a twisty whodunit and a propulsive action plot in his enjoyable third thriller featuring Homeland Security fixer Travis Devine (after The Edge). Devine’s work with the U.S. Office of Special Projects has put him in the crosshairs of an assassin who manages, undetected, to slip a threatening note into his coat pocket, signed simply “The Girl On the Train.” Worried about his safety, Devine’s handlers give him a new assignment: tracking down affluent businessman Danny Glass, who’s been charged with racketeering, human trafficking, and drug smuggling. Glass’s sister and brother-in-law recently overdosed on fentanyl, leaving behind their 12-year-old daughter, Betsy. Glass has applied to become the girl’s legal guardian, a step possibly meant to keep her from sharing incriminating information about him. Devine sets out to befriend Betsy in hopes she’ll disclose what she knows, only to learn that she believes her parents, whom she insists were not addicts, may have been murdered. Baldacci nimbly balances the detective story with Devine’s anxieties about his potential assassination, and the precocious, intrepid Betsy is a hugely memorable supporting character. This keeps the series going strong. Agent: Aaron Priest, Aaron M. Priest Literary. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 10/25/2024 | Details & Permalink

Finder (the Nick Heller series) delivers a fitfully arresting but hard-to-swallow thriller about an investment analyst whose life gets turned upside down after he marries a free-spirited artist. The overstuffed plot proceeds along two main tracks: in the present, Paul Brightman has shed his identity and become Grant Anderson, a New Hampshire boat builder, only to be forced on the run after a hit man tries to kill him. Flashbacks reveal how, six years earlier, Brightman left his career on Wall Street after meeting photographer Tatyana Galkin to work for her wealthy father’s shady investment company. Soon, Brightman realizes something nearly every reader will clock immediately: that he is working for an elaborate criminal organization with ties to the Kremlin. Though the plot generates some real suspense as Brightman attempts to escape the Russians using skills he learned from his paranoid, off-the-grid father, its momentum is hampered by too much backstory and too many fawning descriptions of the Galkins’ homes and luxury goods. An over-the-top deus ex machina at the climax doesn’t help matters. This is a misfire. Agent: Don Conaway, Writers House. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 10/25/2024 | Details & Permalink

Tallo’s entertaining third mystery featuring Augusta “Gus” Monet (after Poison Lilies) finds the sometime-investigator reluctantly returning to her hometown in Ontario, Canada, for the funeral of her missing partner, Howard Baylis. Howard, a journalist, disappeared three years earlier while reporting a story about bird migration that took an unexpected turn when he uncovered the shady past of his main source. Now, Howard’s family has finally accepted the likelihood of his death and planned a service. Gus, however, refuses to believe he’s gone, and she resumes her quest to track him down after she stumbles on his obituary in the newspaper. Though the trail is stone-cold, Gus recruits her teen daughter, Bly—the book’s narrator—to help her. Their efforts aren’t well received by Howard’s grieving parents or the police in Prince Edward County, but mother and daughter soon unearth new clues that threaten to blow the case wide open. With an intricate plot and three-dimensional characters, this marks the series’ third straight winner. Here’s hoping a fourth is on the way. Agent: David Halpern, Robbins Office. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 10/25/2024 | Details & Permalink

A pregnant young woman seeks shelter from a winter storm and finds herself in far more harrowing circumstances in this solid if familiar outing from bestseller McFadden (The Boyfriend). Tegan Werner, 23 and eight months pregnant, lives alone in Lewiston, Maine, where she barely stays afloat by working double shifts at a supermarket. On a dark December evening, she sets out to visit her brother; soon, a gentle snowfall worsens into a full-blown blizzard, and her car spins out and crashes into a tree. Alone in the middle of nowhere, nursing a painful ankle injury and desperately anxious about the safety of her unborn child, Tegan is approached by a burly man who introduces himself as Hank and invites her into his nearby home. With no other option aside from freezing to death in her car, Tegan accepts—to her tremendous detriment. Narrated in alternating chapters by Tegan, Hank, and Hank’s wife, Polly, McFadden’s Misery-esque setup grows increasingly absurd on its way toward a preposterous series of late-stage twists. Still, the narrative’s brisk pacing and frequent cliffhangers make it easy to wolf down in a single sitting. McFadden’s fans will enjoy themselves. Agent: Christina Hogrebe, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 10/25/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this canny spin-off of her Brigid Quinn series, Masterman (Maternal Instinct) turns the focus to frustrated novelist Alice Einstein. After failing to make good on her early literary promise, Alice has spent the last several years writing greeting card messages while living with her younger sister, Liesl, in Saddlebrooke, Ariz. Ever since Liesl’s husband, Sam, disappeared a decade earlier, kindhearted Liesl has concerned herself with such causes as migrant housing and environmental conservation. Chaos swoops into the sisters’ lives when Sam suddenly returns to Saddlebrooke; Alice is skeptical of his motives, but an ecstatic Liesl welcomes him with open arms. As Alice tries—with the help of PI Brigid Quinn—­to find out why Sam has reappeared, she realizes she may have the material for a thriller that’ll put her back in the publishing game—or at least get her agent to return her calls. What Alice doesn’t bet on, however, is just how much she’ll learn about her sister over the course of her and Brigid’s investigation. Masterman piles on the twists, schemes, and false assumptions but grounds each revelation in the lives of her three-dimensional characters. The results are wickedly satisfying. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 10/25/2024 | Details & Permalink

Rotstein’s stale latest (after The Out-of-Town Lawyer) dramatizes a wrongful termination lawsuit from more than 10 different perspectives. Through court transcripts and flashbacks, Rotstein spins a familiar tale of medical malpractice: after receiving FDA approval for Sophrosyne, a drug designed to end opiate addiction, pharmaceutical company MediMiracle is poised to dominate the market. Then researcher Ellison Ricard makes an alarming discovery during a trial study: Sophrosyne appears to increase the risk of stroke and fatal skin disorders among Black patients. After Ricard reports his findings and threatens to blow the whistle if they aren’t addressed, he’s fired by MediMiracle CEO Peyton Burke. Ricard files a civil suit against Burke and the company, throwing Sophrosyne’s future into question and putting the matter before an eight-person jury. Rotstein cycles through the well-rendered viewpoints of the jurors—an editor, a furniture magnate, a teacher, and a scientist among them—as well as those of the attorneys on both sides of the case, but the narrative structure does little to enhance the story’s themes, and it certainly doesn’t make the absurd denouement any easier to swallow. Even the author’s fans will struggle with this one. Agent: Jill Marr, Sandra Dijkstra Literary. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 10/25/2024 | Details & Permalink

A long-forgotten CIA mission comes back to sting former agent Teddy Fay, now disguised as a Hollywood star, in Battles’s disappointing latest entry in Woods’s series (after Obsession). While on a European tour to promote his latest film, Fay receives word that CIA agents, both current and retired, are being killed. All of the victims are connected to Operation Golden Hour, a decade-old mission focused on taking down the shadowy Trust organization, which funded terrorism worldwide. Current CIA director Lance Cabot warns Fay that he could be next, but Fay believes his mastery of disguise will keep him safe as he figures out who’s behind the killings. The narrative flits across Europe, from Venice to Budapest to Berlin, with Fay and his entourage repeatedly charming movie crowds, then dodging trouble. Along the way, readers learn little about Golden Hour or the Trust, and are subjected instead to stale showbiz satire and anemic action. The finale arrives suddenly and makes little impact. Series readers may appreciate the brief appearance of fan favorite Stone Barrington, but it’s not enough to save the day. This misses the mark. Agent: Anne Sibald, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 10/25/2024 | Details & Permalink

Three passengers face unnerving uncertainties on a train ride through Sweden in this lyrical if overwrought psychological thriller from Schulman (The Survivors). Reeling from an ugly divorce, Harriet grapples with her desirability as she travels to Malma with her elderly father. Aboard the same train, meticulous, controlling Oskar struggles to save his foundering marriage, while young Yana sets out to discover the truth about her missing mother after finding a mysterious photo album among her deceased father’s possessions. Through flashbacks, Schulman gradually reveals the points of connection between these characters, linking them in consistently surprising ways as the suspense mounts. Shrewd misdirection and sinewy prose (“She moves briskly through the narrow aisle, and he observes the gazes of those who catch sight of her for the first time. He always does that, even now he does it”) set the novel up for success, but Schulman’s ambition eventually outstrips his ability, and the plot devolves into a tangle of far-fetched misery. Though not without its virtues, this fails to stick the landing. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 10/25/2024 | Details & Permalink

Fledgling showrunner Eden Bennett faces challenges too real for reality TV in this breezy whodunit from Dahl (a pseudonym for Perfume and Pain author Anna Dorn). Eden is taking over the reins of the New Jersey–set megahit Garden State Goddesses as it enters its third season. To shake things up, she introduces an outsider to the show’s insular Sicilian American cast: her Californian cousin, Hope, who has married into Garden State’s central family, the Fontanas, after Eden introduced her to her now-husband. But Eden may have underestimated the passions that hippie-ish Hope would arouse in everyone from her sharp-tongued new sister-in-law, Carmela, to fan favorite Renee, a jewelry designer who’s recently been outed as bisexual and nurtures a crush on Hope. At first, the new conflicts make for great TV; then someone gets killed, forcing Eden to add “gumshoe” to her job description. Dahl, like her protagonist, proves to be an adept ringleader of this comedic circus, but readers will wish her players were slightly less stereotypical—for a novel so sympathetic to sapphic romance, for example, the lone gay male character is a surprisingly flat camp cartoon. Still, mystery fans with a taste for the absurd will have a frothy good time. Agent: Sarah Phair, Sanford J. Greenberger Assoc. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 10/25/2024 | Details & Permalink