The Magdalena Curse
show more
F.G. Cottam. St. Martin's/Dunne, $25.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-312-64325-6 9780312643256
An innocent child's soul is at stake in this well-wrought war of wills and witchcraft. When nightmare-ridden 10-year-old Adam Hunter suddenly begins speaking in tongues, Dr. Elizabeth Bancroft diagnoses the voices as those of the dead. Adam's father, Mark, is not surprised. A decade earlier, on a special ops assignment in Bolivia, he ran horribly afoul of Mrs. Mallory, a sorceress who destroyed his men and cursed his progeny. With Adam's well-being now in jeopardy, Mark has no choice but to track down and destroy the elusive Mrs. Mallory—a mission that compels Elizabeth to acknowledge suppressed sorcery skills handed down through her own family tree. Cottam (Dark Echo) does an excellent job of seamlessly meshing real-world and supernatural thrills, and his Mrs. Mallory is a particularly unsettling incarnation of pure evil in human form. (Aug.)
San Diego Noir
show more
Edited by Maryelizabeth Hart. Akashic, $15.95 trade paper (300p) ISBN 978-1-936070-94-7 9781936070947
San Diego, Calif., calls itself "America's Finest City," but apparently it's not "America's Finest City for Noir Fiction," if this uneven anthology is any guide. Perhaps the best entry is T. Jefferson Parker's character-driven "Vic Primeval," about a stripper/hooker and the poor sap who falls for her. Another standout is Don Winslow's "After Thirty," about a "hard case," sailor Charlie Decker, on leave in San Diego in the closing days of WWII. The characters feel real, and the story has a neat, ironic twist at the end. Also notable is Cameron Pierce Hughes's "Moving Black Objects," a grungy exploration of San Diego's underside by a character who will surprise the reader. But most of these 15 stories are subpar, with too much local color and too little plot—and not nearly enough of a noir sensibility. (June)
County Line
Bill Cameron. Tyrus (Consortium, dist.), $24.95 (404p) ISBN 978-1-935562-35-1; $15.95 trade paper ISBN 978-1-935562-52-8 9781935562351
Contemporary sharp-edged noir doesn't get much better than Cameron's mournful third novel featuring ex-cop Skin Kadash (after 2010's Day One). Kadash, who's recovering from a serious gunshot wound, returns to Portland, Ore., to reboot his relationship with on-and-off lover Ruby Jane Whittaker, the owner of a coffee shop chain. When he's unable to reach Whittaker, a desperate Kadash goes to her apartment, only to find the corpse of an elderly man in her bathtub. Aided by Peter McKrall, who also was involved with Whittaker, Kadash follow tenuous leads to find her, a search made more urgent by a murder. At one point, the narrative flashes back almost 20 years, to provide Whittaker's tragic backstory, which continues to reverberate in the present. The twists flow naturally from what the reader has learned about the characters, though it's clear Kadash has hidden facets Cameron has yet to explore. (June)
Lake Charles
show more
Ed Lynskey. Wildside (www.wildsidepress.com), $12.99 trade paper (192p) ISBN 978-1-4344-3046-5 9781434430465
At the start of Lynskey's dark, casually violent tale set in 1979 rural Tennessee, Brendan Fishback is out on bail while awaiting trial for the murder of a casual pickup, Ashleigh Sizemore. Brendan is driving to Lake Charles with twin sister Edna and his brother-in-law and best friend, Cobb Kuzawa, who have "yet to exchange a civil word" since they separated on July 4. When Edna disappears at the lake, Brendan winds up getting entangled with local pot farmers, federal agents, and Ashleigh's rich, vengeful father. Cobb's father, a crusty Korean War vet, plays a key role with his take-no-prisoners attitude in a wild scramble to find Edna and the "big bug" behind the pot farms. Brendan's unusual dreams, in which Ashleigh taunts him to find her real killer, provide another spur to action. Lynskey (Troglodytes) vividly renders backwoods Tennessee, a land where life is hard, and death, sometimes hard sometimes easy, is frequent, and you do whatever is necessary to survive. (June)
The Counterfeit Madam: A Gil Cunningham Murder Mystery
show more
Pat McIntosh. Soho Constable, $25 (304p) ISBN 978-1-56947-949-0 9781569479490
The provost of Glasgow asks Gil Cunningham, the archbishop's quaester, to track down the source of counterfeit coins flooding the area in McIntosh's suspenseful eighth mystery set in 15th-century Scotland (after 2010's A Pig of Cold Vision). Gil's workload is doubled when Dame Isabella Torrance, a crusty old woman, is murdered by someone who inserted a nail in her ear. Isabella re-entered Gil's life after many years a short time before to propose a land transaction that would have exchanged two plots for the abandonment of Gil's foster-son's inheritance claim. The investigator suspects that the death may be connected with the presence of a brothel on one of the properties Isabella was seeking to barter. Gil and his wife, Alys, make a winning pair, and McIntosh deftly balances plot and period detail, though some might lament the lack of a glossary for archaic words like sasine. (June)
Clutches and Curses: A Haley Randolph Mystery
show more
Dorothy Howell. Kensington, $22 (320p) ISBN 978-0-7582-5330-9 9780758253309
In Howell's frothy fourth mystery featuring handbag-obsessed Haley Randolph (after 2010's Shoulder Bags and Shootings), Holt's Department Store employee Haley seizes the chance to work at a new branch in Henderson, Nev., near Las Vegas after being cursed by an irate customer with an eastern European accent at the L.A. flagship store. Soon after she arrives at the Holt's in Henderson, Haley stumbles on the bloody corpse of a young woman on the floor of the women's dressing room. While the police are a tad suspicious when she claims not to recognize the victim, Courtney Collins, with whom she went to high school, lucky Haley remains free to seek not only the killer but also the Delicious, "the hottest handbag of the season." The well-crafted plot offers plenty of red herrings, though shallow Haley won't appeal to every cozy fan. (June)
Camouflage: A Nameless Detective Novel
show more
Bill Pronzini. Forge, $24.99 (288p) ISBN 978-0-7653-2564-8 9780765325648
Pronzini's 36th Nameless Detective novel, though a marked improvement over its immediate predecessor, 2010's Betrayers, hardly reflects a return to form by the MWA Grand Master. This entry, like other recent books in the series, alternates between the eponymous lead, a San Francisco PI, and the ongoing travails of his colleague, Jake Runyon. Obnoxious businessman David Virden hires Nameless to trace his first (of three) ex-wives, so that he can get the annulment his current fiancée requires. While Nameless quickly finds the first former Mrs. Virden, his client's subsequent disappearance leads to violent complications. Runyon's case has a personal aspect—his new love interest, Bryn Darby, believes that her nine-year-old son, Bobby, is being abused by her ex-husband, but can't get Bobby to confirm her fears. Runyon's discovery of the truth likewise has violent consequences. Contrivances that some readers will find hard to swallow burden both story lines. (June)
Bones of a Feather: A Sarah Booth Delaney Mystery
show more
Carolyn Haines. Minotaur, $24.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-312-59502-9 9780312595029
At the start of Haines's entertaining 11th Sarah Booth Delaney mystery (after 2010's Bone Appetit), Sarah and her detecting partner, Tinkie Bellcase Richmond, agree to help sisters Monica and Eleanor Levert of Natchez, Miss., obtain the insurance payoff for their purloined $4 million heirloom necklace. Having sworn off dangerous cases, both investigators figure proving a high stakes but simple theft should be a breeze. Alas, the evil deeds of no-good ancestor Barthelme Levert hang over Briarcliff, the family estate overlooking the Mississippi, which is haunted by a phantom horse and rider that even the longtime gardener can't seem to get a good look at. Meanwhile, the Leverts' cousin and supposed sole heir, Millicent Gentry, schemes to gain the Levert fortune, even as a drop-dead gorgeous newcomer purports to be Monica's abandoned-at-birth son. In the end, Sarah and Tinkie must strive to thwart a plan of brilliantly diabolical proportions. (June)
Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead
Sara Gran. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $24 (288p) ISBN 978-0-547-42849-9 9780547428499
In this captivating first in a projected series from Gran (Dope), PI Claire DeWitt comes to New Orleans to help a client, Leon Salvatore, find his ADA uncle, Vic Willing, who went missing at the time of Hurricane Katrina. Claire relies often on the "maddening... notoriously difficult" Détection by legendary French detective Jacques Silette ("No one is innocent. The only question is How will you bear your portion of guilt?") as well as her dreams for guidance. In one dream, Vic tells her, in language that echoes Silette's handbook, to: "Follow the clues.... Believe nothing. Question everything." Suspicion falls on an 18-year-old career-criminal-in-the-making, Andray Fairview, who once worked for Vic and broke into his house. Claire is soon sucked into the underbelly of a city gasping for air. The haunting atmosphere of post-Katrina New Orleans lingers long after the revelation of Vic's fate. (June)
Hotel Bosphorus
show more
Esmahan Aykol, trans. from the Turkish by Ruth Whitehouse. Bitter Lemon, $14.95 trade paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-904738-68-8 9781904738688
Aykol makes her English-language debut with her first mystery featuring Kati Hirschel, an offbeat amateur sleuth with a distinctive narrative voice. Kati, a German who's lived for many years in Istanbul, runs the city's only bookstore specializing in mysteries. She gets her chance to play detective in real life after the arrival of an old friend, movie actress Petra Vogel, who's starring in a joint Turkish-German production. Petra becomes the main suspect in the murder of the film's director, Kurt Muller, after someone drops a plugged-in hair dryer into his bath and electrocutes him. Rumors that Muller was on the verge of replacing Petra provide the police with an obvious motive. Kati takes up the case personally, involving herself with a hunky inspector along the way to the logical and surprising conclusion. Fans of such female detectives as Amanda Cross's Kate Fansler and Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher will find a lot to like. (July)
