Mystery Lovers’ Book Club November 2016 Vote! Title Author Year Published Death Qualified Kate Wilhelm 1991 Summary Lucas Kendrick appears at his estranged wife’s home after a mysterious seven-year disappearance, and is instantly shot. Nell Kendrick, charged with his murder, calls Attorney Frank Holloway to defend her. But Frank cannot prepare her defense alone. He needs a lawyer who is “death qualified”—able to defend capital cases. He appeals to his daughter Barbara, who, out of disillusionment with a profession prizing politics over justice, abandoned her practice five years before. Reluctantly, Barbara is plunged into a case involving chaos theory, the mysterious death of a researcher, and a politically motivated and hostile prosecutor. To complicate matters, Barbara falls in love with a mathematician whose help she seeks in unraveling the case.
Transcript
Mystery Lovers’ Book Club
November 2016 Vote!
Title Author Year Published
Death Qualified Kate Wilhelm 1991
Summary
Lucas Kendrick appears at his estranged wife’s home after a mysterious seven-year disappearance, and is instantly shot. Nell Kendrick, charged with his murder, calls Attorney Frank Holloway to defend her. But Frank cannot prepare her defense alone. He needs a lawyer who is “death qualified”—able to defend capital cases. He appeals to his daughter Barbara, who, out of disillusionment with a profession prizing politics over justice, abandoned her practice five years before. Reluctantly, Barbara is plunged into a case involving chaos theory, the mysterious death of a researcher, and a politically motivated and hostile prosecutor. To complicate matters, Barbara falls in love with a mathematician whose help she seeks in unraveling the case.
Title Author Year Published
A Night Too Dark Dana Stabenow 2010
SummaryIn Alaska, somebody disappears every day. Hunters who head into the wilderness… Fishermen who brave the great rivers…Tourists who attempt to do both. In Aleut detective Kate Shugak's Park, people have been falling off the grid quite a bit lately. And as she and state trooper Jim Chopin are about to realize, it's got something to do with the recent discovery of the world's second-largest gold mine in their very own backyard.
A hostile environmental activist organization has embraced Alaska's Suulutaq Mine as its reason for being, attracting more attention than many of the locals can tolerate. So it's almost a relief when Kate finally finds a body―this, more than politics, she can handle. Until the identity of the body vanishes, too… Now it's up to Kate and Jim to dig deeper into the mining controversy and find the truth about what's going on in her homeland. Even if that means facing down an enemy who will kill to keep certain secrets buried…
Title Author Year PublishedThe Abominable Man (a Martin Beck mystery) Maj Sjowall/Per Wahloo 2009
Summary
The gruesome murder of a police captain in his hospital room reveals the unsavory history of a man who spent forty years practicing a horrible blend of strong-arm police work and shear brutality. Martin Beck and his colleagues feverishly comb Stockholm for the murderer, a demented and deadly rifleman, who has plans for even more chaos. As the tension builds and a feeling of imminent danger grips Beck, his investigation unearths evidence of police corruption. That’s when an even stronger sense of responsibility and something like shame urge him into taking a series of drastic steps, which lead to a shocking disaster.
Title Author Year Published
Blood Rain Michael Dibdin 2001
Summary
Aurelio Zen—cynical and tough, yet worn down from years of law enforcement—has just been given the worst assignment he could imagine. He has been sent to the heart of hostile territory: Sicily, the ancient, beautiful island where blood has been known to flow like wine, and the distinction between the police and the criminals is a fine one. Even worse, he has been sent to spy on the elite anti-Mafia squad. The only thing that makes the job palatable—and takes his mind off routine details like the rotting body found in a remote train car—is that Zen's adopted daughter, Carla, is also in town. But life becomes precarious for Carla when she stumbles upon some information she'd be better off not knowing and befriends a local magistrate on the Mafia's most wanted list. What ensues is a breakneck plot of amazing complexity that culminates in a stunning finale.
Title Author Year Published
Black Seconds Karin Fossum 2009
Summary
Ida Joner gets on her brand-new bike and sets off toward town. A good-natured, happy girl, she is looking forward to her tenth birthday. Thirty-five minutes after Ida should have come home, her mother starts to worry. She phones store owners, Ida’s friends, anyone who could have seen her. But no one has.Suspicion immediately falls on Emil Mork, a local character who lives alone and hasn’t spoken since childhood. His mother insists on cleaning his house weekly—although she’s sometimes afraid of what she might find there. A mother’s worst nightmare in either case: to lose a child or to think a child capable of murder. As Ida’s relatives reach the breaking point and the media frenzy surrounding the case begins, Inspector Konrad Sejer is his usual calm and reassuring self. But he’s puzzled. And disturbed. This is the strangest case he’s seen in years.
Title Author Year Published
Sleight of Hand Phillip Margolin 2013
SummaryCharles Benedict—magnetic criminal defense lawyer, amateur illusionist, and professional hit man—and private investigator Dana Cutler are on a collision course set in motion by Benedict's greatest sleight of hand yet: framing a millionaire for the murder of his much younger wife.
Ten years ago, Horace Blair fell in love with Carrie, the prosecutor during his DUI trial. After a torrid courtship, he persuaded her to marry him and to sign a prenuptial agreement guaranteeing her twenty million dollars if she remained faithful during the first ten years of their marriage. The week before their tenth anniversary, Carrie disappears, and Horace is charged with her murder. Desperate to clear his name, the millionaire hires one of D.C.'s most brilliant and ruthless defense attorneys—Charles Benedict.
Meanwhile, private investigator Dana Cutler is in the Pacific Northwest on the trail of a stolen relic, a gold scepter dating back to the Ottoman Empire. Hitting a dead end, she returns to Virginia, perplexed and disappointed—and straight into the twisting case of Horace and Carrie Blair.
Title Author Year Published
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter Tom Franklin 2011
Summary
An atmospheric drama set in rural Mississippi. In the late 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas "32" Jones were boyhood pals. Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry, the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son of a poor, single black mother. Yet for a few months the boys stepped outside of their circumstances and shared a special bond. But then tragedy struck: Larry took a girl on a date to a drive-in movie, and she was never heard from again. She was never found and Larry never confessed, but all eyes rested on him as the culprit. The incident shook the county—and perhaps Silas most of all. His friendship with Larry was broken, and then Silas left town.
More than twenty years have passed. Larry, a mechanic, lives a solitary existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion. Silas has returned as a constable. He and Larry have no reason to cross paths until another girl disappears and Larry is blamed again. And now the two men who once called each other friend are forced to confront the past they've buried and ignored for decades.
Title Author Year Published
Bangkok 8 John Burdett 2004
Summary
Witnessed by a throng of gaping spectators, a charismatic Marine sergeant is murdered under a Bangkok bridge inside a bolted-shut Mercedes Benz. Among the witnesses are the only two cops in the city not on the take, but within moments one is murdered and his partner, Sonchai Jitpleecheep—a devout Buddhist and the son of a Thai bar girl and a long-gone Vietnam War G.I.—is hell-bent on wreaking revenge. On a vigilante mission to capture his partner’s murderer, Sonchai is begrudgingly paired with a beautiful FBI agent named Jones and captures her heart in the process. In a city fueled by illicit drugs and infinite corruption, prostitution and priceless art, Sonchai’s quest for vengeance takes him into a world much more sinister than he could have ever imagined.
Title Author Year Published
Thumbprint Friedrich Glauser 2004
Summary
The death of a traveling salesman appears to be an open and shut case. Studer is confronted with an obvious suspect and a confession to the murder. But nothing is what it seems. Envy, hatred, and the corrosive power of money lie just beneath the surface. Studer’s investigation soon splinters the glassy façade of Switzerland’s tidy villages and manicured forests.
Diagnosed a schizophrenic, addicted to morphine and opium, Friedrich Glauser spent the greater part of his life in psychiatric wards, insane asylums and prison. His acute observations conjure up a world of those at the margins of society.
Title Author Year Published
For Reasons Unknown Michael Wood 2015
Summary
A darkly compelling debut crime novel. The start of a brilliant series, perfect for fans of Stuart MacBride, Val McDermid, and James Oswald.
DCI Matilda Darke has returned to work after a nine month absence. A shadow of her former self, she is tasked with re-opening a cold case: the terrifyingly brutal murders of Miranda and Stefan Harkness. The only witness was their eleven-year-old son, Jonathan, who was too deeply traumatized to speak a word.
Then a dead body is discovered, and the investigation leads back to Matilda's case. Suddenly the past and present converge, and it seems a killer may have come back for more…
Title Author Year Published
Coffin Road Peter May 2016
Summary
On the remote Isle of Harris in Scotland's Outer Hebrides, a man washes up on a deserted beach, hypothermic and completely disoriented. He has no idea who he is or how he got there. The only clue to his condition is a map of the island showing a desolate, ancient path called the Coffin Road. With a sense of dread and no clear idea what lies at the other end, he knows he must follow the trail if he has any hope of discovering his identity.
Meanwhile, homicide detective George Gunn makes the rough ocean crossing to a remote, sea-battered lighthouse on a rock in the northern Atlantic, twenty miles west of the Outer Hebrides, to investigate a brutal murder. Despite its isolation, the tiny island has seen its share of tragedy: more than a century earlier, three lighthouse keepers disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again. And now there is a new tragedy, and Gunn must figure out what happened.
At the same time, a teenage girl lies in her Edinburgh bedroom, desperate to discover the truth about her father's death. Two years after the discovery of the pioneering scientist's suicide note, Karen Fleming still cannot accept that her father would willingly abandon her. And the more she discovers about the nature of his research, the more she suspects that suicide had nothing to do with it.
Title Author Year Published
The Janissary Tree Jason Goodwin 2006
Summary
It is 1836. Europe is modernizing, and the Ottoman Empire must follow suit. But just before the Sultan announces sweeping changes, a wave of murders threatens the fragile balance of power in his court. Who is behind them? Only one intelligence agent can be trusted to find out: Yashim Lastname, a man both brilliant and near-invisible in this world. You see, Yashim is a eunuch.
He leads us into the palace's luxurious seraglios and Istanbul's teeming streets, and leans on the wisdom of a dyspeptic Polish ambassador, a transsexual dancer, and a Creole-born queen mother. And he introduces us to the Janissaries. For 400 years, they were the empire's elite soldiers, but they grew too powerful, and ten years ago, the Sultan had them crushed. Are the Janissaries staging a brutal comeback?
Title Author Year Published
The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax Dorothy Gilman 1985
Summary
When Emily Pollifax answers the phone that Sunday morning, she quickly forgets all about her Garden Club tea that afternoon. For the voice on the other end belonged to a man she had never seen, a man from the CIA who asked her if she could leave immediately on a mission that would take her halfway across the world! What could Mrs. Pollifax say but yes?
Title Author Year Published
The Neruda Case Roberto Ampuero 2012
Summary
In The Neruda Case, readers are introduced to Cayetano as he takes on his first case as a private eye. Set against the fraught political world of pre-Pinochet Chile, Castro’s Cuba, and perilous behind-the-Wall East Berlin, this mystery spans countries, cultures, and political ideas, and features one of literature’s most beloved figures—Pablo Neruda.
Cayetano meets the poet at a party in Chile in the 1970s. The dying Neruda recruits Cayetano to help him solve the last great mystery of his life. As Cayetano fumbles around his first case, finding it hard to embrace the new inspector identity foisted upon him, he begins to learn more about Neruda’s hidden agenda. Neruda sends him on a whirlwind expedition around the world, ending back in Chile, where Pinochet’s coup plays out against the final revelations of their journey.
Evocative, romantic, and full of intrigue, Ampuero’s novel is both a glimpse into the life of Pablo Neruda as death approaches and a political thriller that unfolds during the fiercely convulsive end of an era.
Title Author Year Published
An Unquiet Grave (Louis Kincaid #7) PJ Parrish 2006
Summary
Not Every Soul Rest in Peace In a remote corner of the Michigan woods, behind rusted iron gates and crumbling stone walls, lie one of the country's most notorious sanitariums and its forgotten cemetery. The sprawling ruin is empty now, and the bulldozers have come to raze it. But as they do, a terrifying secret begins to emerge. The body in Claudia Olsen's grave is that of a stranger who died horribly. This much Louis Kincaid knows. But what happened to the woman who should be buried there? It's a question no one will answer, one that leads Kincaid to the long, dark tunnels below the asylum and crimes of unimaginable depravity. . . Now, in a place where the walls are stained with secrets, the air thick with the lingering history of screams, Louis Kincaid is on his darkest journey yet, matching wits with a monster whose work will not be silenced.
Title Author Year Published
Bruno, Chief of Police Martin Walker 2010
Summary
Meet Benoît Courrèges, aka Bruno, a policeman in a small village in the South of France. He’s a former soldier who has embraced the pleasures and slow rhythms of country life. He has a gun but never wears it; he has the power to arrest but never uses it. But then the murder of an elderly North African who fought in the French army changes all that. Now Bruno must balance his beloved routines—living in his restored shepherd’s cottage, shopping at the local market, drinking wine, strolling the countryside—with a politically delicate investigation. He’s paired with a young policewoman from Paris and the two suspect anti-immigrant militants. As they learn more about the dead man’s past, Bruno’s suspicions turn toward a more complex motive.
Title Author Year Published
The Crow Trap Ann Cleaves 2010
Summary
The Crow Trap is the first book in Ann Cleeves' Vera Stanhope series -- which is now a major ITV detective drama starring Brenda Blethyn, VERA. Three very different women come together at isolated Baikie's Cottage on the North Pennines, to complete an environmental survey. Three women who each know the meaning of betrayal ...Rachael, the team leader, is still reeling after a double betrayal by her lover and boss, Peter Kemp. Anne, a botanist, sees the survey as a chance to indulge in a little deception of her own. And then there is Grace, a strange, uncommunicative young woman, hiding plenty of her own secrets. Rachael is the first to arrive at the cottage, where she discovers the body of her friend, Bella Furness. Bella, it appears, has committed suicide -- a verdict Rachael refuses to accept. When another death occurs, a fourth woman enters the picture -- the unconventional Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope ...Also available in the Vera Stanhope series are Telling Tales, Hidden Depths, Silent Voices and The Glass Room. Ann Cleeves' Shetland series (BBC television drama SHETLAND) contains five titles, of which Dead Water is the most recent.
Title Author Year Published
The Nature of the Beast Louise Penny Reprint - 2016
Summary
Hardly a day goes by when nine year old Laurent Lepage doesn't cry wolf. From alien invasions, to walking trees, to winged beasts in the woods, to dinosaurs spotted in the village of Three Pines, his tales are so extraordinary no one can possibly believe him. Including Armand and Reine-Marie Gamache, who now live in the little Quebec village.
But when the boy disappears, the villagers are faced with the possibility that one of his tall tales might have been true. And so begins a frantic search for the boy and the truth. What they uncover deep in the forest sets off a sequence of events that leads to murder, leads to an old crime, leads to an old betrayal. Leads right to the door of an old poet.
And now it is now, writes Ruth Zardo. And the dark thing is here. A monster once visited Three Pines. And put down deep roots. And now, Ruth knows, it is back.
Armand Gamache, the former head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec, must face the possibility that, in not believing the boy, he himself played a terrible part in what happens next.
Title Author Year Published
Death at La Fenice Donna Leon Reprint - 2014
Summary
There is little violent crime in Venice, a serenely beautiful floating city of mystery and magic, history and decay. But the evil that does occasionally rear its head is the jurisdiction of Guido Brunetti, the suave, urbane vice-commissario of police and a genius at detection. Now all of his admirable abilities must come into play in the deadly affair of Maestro Helmut Wellauer, a world-renowned conductor who died painfully from cyanide poisoning during an intermission at La Fenice.
But as the investigation unfolds, a chilling picture slowly begins to take shape—a detailed portrait of revenge painted with vivid strokes of hatred and shocking depravity. And the dilemma for Guido Brunetti will not be finding a murder suspect, but rather narrowing the choices down to one.
Title Author Year Published
Past Crimes Glen Erik Hamilton 2015
Summary
Van Shaw was raised by his Irish immigrant grandfather Donovan to be a thief—to boost cars, beat security alarms, and crack safes. But at eighteen, Van broke all ties to that life and joined the military, serving as an Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, after ten years of silence, Dono has asked his grandson to come home to Seattle.
Van is curious and a little unnerved by his grandfather's request. But when he arrives at Dono's house, Van discovers his grandfather bleeding out on the floor from a gunshot wound to the head. With a lifetime of tough history between him and the old man, the battle-tested Ranger knows he'll be the first suspect.
To clear his name and avenge his grandfather, Van plunges back into a violent, high-stakes world where right and wrong aren't defined by the law . . . and where the secrets held by those closest to him are the deadliest of all.
Title Author Year Published
Collecting the Dead Spencer Kope Paperback – April, 2017
Summary
Magnus “Steps” Craig is part of an elite three-man Special Tracking Unit of the FBI, charged with finding the lost or abducted and bringing them home. Dubbed “The Human Bloodhound,” Steps is renowned for his incredible ability to find and follow trails over any surface. He has a special skill―known only to his partner―that has enabled his team to stop seventeen serial killers over the past five years. But now there’s a new monster at-large, and the bodies are piling up.
When the remains of one young woman are found, Steps recognizes the “signature” from another crime scene: the mark of a sad face. Meanwhile, a serial killer that Steps has been trying to track for over ten years, code name “Leonardo,” is back in play―and on Steps’s trail. Just as the investigation seems to be closing in on Leonardo, the hunt for Sad Face heats up. Now, it’s up to Steps to outrun and outwit one of the most twisted serial killers he’s ever encountered. . .as time ticks away on the lives of the victims. Will this be another one of Steps’s miraculously-solved cases―or his last?
Title Author Year Published
Snow Angels James Thompson 2009 (Finnish)2010 (English)
Summary
Thompson has gone one to become one of the big guns in Nordic crime fiction according to Publishers Weekly
A Booklist Best Crime Novel Debut: American-born Thompson, who's lived in Finland for the past decade, offers a bleak look at the ravages of that country's long, dark winter as well as intriguing glimpses of Finnish culture in his solid U.S. debut, the first in a new crime series.
Shortly before Christmas, Kari Vaara, the police chief of the Lapland town of Kittilä, gets a phone call informing him that the body of Sufia Elmi, a Somali refugee and minor film star, has been found in a snowfield on a reindeer farm. The victim has also been mutilated, perhaps raped, and a racial slur carved into her flesh. When Kari's ex-wife's lover becomes the prime suspect, Kari spurns the chance to recuse himself and presses on.
The winter hazards of alcoholism, suicide and murder all play a part as Kari uncovers more suspects. Sufia's imperious father, Abdi Barre, who was a doctor in his native country and now runs a cleaning service, puts added pressure on Kari. Tangled small ltown relationships and lust also fuel this noirish thriller.
Title Author Year Published
Black Dog Stephen Booth 2000
Summary
The Vernon family is an anomaly in the Peak District. They are very well to do, and their lifestyle is in stark contrast to the farmers and other working people of the area. Graham Vernon entertains his business contacts royally; their palatial home is cared for by gardeners and other servants. However, even the wealthy are not immune to crime. Their 15-year-old daughter, Laura, goes missing. Shortly before her disappearance, she was seen in the gardens with a young man. Have they run away together? Has she been abducted against her will?
This relentless, atmospheric thriller is perfect for readers of New York Times bestselling authors Ian Rankin and Peter Robinson, and for viewers of the hit TV series The Killing
With his first novel, Black Dog, Stephen “set out to subvert the genre” of countryside crime. Normally crime in a village is seen as cozy, and it makes you think of Agatha Christie, but “it doesn’t have to be like that; it can be much darker. A rural setting is very appropriate for a lot of crimes.”
Title Author Year Published
The Ice Maiden Edna Buchanan 2002
Summary
A chance encounter with a stranger changes the life of reporter Britt Montero forever. The encounter is at Miami's morgue, where the unidentified stranger lies dead. His unusual old scars capture her curiosity-the dead man clearly had a tale to tell. This thief, who was accidentally electrocuted, may be the key that unlocks the long-sought secrets of a sensational cold murder mystery unsolved for more than fourteen years.
Sunny and Ricky, teenagers on a Christmas Eve first date, were abducted, a shocking crime that was never solved despite a gigantic manhunt, a huge reward, and an outraged community. Sunny survived, the lone witness to that terrible night so long ago. But the reclusive Ice Maiden, now an artist and sculptor estranged from her wealthy family, is not talking and the killer's trail vanished long ago, like footprints in melting snow.
Cold Case Squad Sergeant Craig Burch wants the killer. But as the Miami News reporter and the veteran homicide cop investigate the old outrage, they learn that sometimes the cost of justice is too high. For Burch, whose elite unit breathes new life into cold murder cases, the investigation strikes too close to home, reigniting his own private obsessions. And Britt, in the wake of national tragedy, is haunted, both awake and asleep, by the persistent ghost of a doomed, lost girl, perhaps a warning of a new tragedy to come. Britt meets the Ice Maiden, nearly freezes to death, and then the trail heats up as the sins of the fathers begin to strike down the innocent. A stone-cold killer out of her past is stalking the Ice Maiden again. Nothing is what it seems. And the inferno is yet to come....Edna Buchanan, a born storyteller, combines her trademark wit, grit, and tension in The Ice Maiden, a narrative alive with Miami's blistering heat and high-octane atmosphere.
Title Author Year Published
Simple Justice John Morgan Wilson 1996
Summary
When a pretty-boy cokehead is murdered outside a gay bar in a working class district of Los Angeles, and a young Latino quickly confesses to the crime, it appears the case is closed. Benjamin Justice, a disgraced former reporter with the Los Angeles Times, is lured out of his alcoholic seclusion to look more deeply into the murder. But why would a teenager confess to a brutal gang initiation killing he didn’t commit? Only Benjamin Justice understands, but with his credibility shattered, no one’s listening.
Title Author Year Published
The Blazing Tree Mary Jo Adamson 2000
Summary
The novel is in the first person voice of Michael Merrick, a young man who has been through hell: after suffering terrible losses, he became addicted to opium – which always sounds almost worse than more common modern addictions – more tempting, in a way, and more impossible to shake free. Someone, he didn’t at the time know who, plucked him out of his opium dreaming, put him in the hands of a surprising man who dragged him back to life, and plunked him down at the beginning of a path to a new life. Not an easy path, and not one Michael is grateful for, for the most part – but new, and positive.
This new life has him working as a police news reporter – not a high-paying or highly respected job, but it’s better than nightmares in an opium den. The book begins with Michael being summoned to the home of the newspaper’s editor, Jasper Quincey, an eccentric whose foibles – or some of them – are shortly explained by his fascination with the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, more commonly known as the Shakers. An elder of the society has come to Quincey as a friend, hoping for help finding out what is behind a series of fires that have been started in two communities, in the last of which an elderly man died. Quincey feels that Michael is the man for the job: he will go undercover in the society and investigate.
Michael is not thrilled. He decides to refuse. But … somehow … his refusal doesn’t take, and he finds himself entering into the community. And in no time at all he has fallen in love.
The main problem with falling in love with a woman of the Shaker community is that upon entering into the life one pledges to lead a life of celibacy … In order to marry, one would have to leave. And the woman Michael loves is a dedicated member of the community …
The suspects in the arsons seem to be many – including a boy Michael very much fears is the one, which would break his heart as the boy has become dear to him, as have many of the members of the community. (Others, not so much.) It’s a race – to figure out who it is before any more fires are lit, before anyone else can die. It works, very well.
Title Author Year Published
The Little Sleep Paul Tremblay 2009
Summary
The wickedly entertaining debut featuring Mark Genevich, Narcoleptic Detective Mark Genevich is a South Boston P.I. with a little problem: he's narcoleptic, and he suffers from the most severe symptoms, including hypnogogic hallucinations. These waking dreams wreak havoc for a guy who depends on real-life clues to make his living. Clients haven't exactly been beating down the door when Mark meets Jennifer Times--daughter of the powerful local D.A. and a contestant on American Star--who walks into his office with an outlandish story about a man who stole her fingers. He awakes from his latest hallucination alone, but on his desk is a manila envelope containing risqué photos of Jennifer. Are the pictures real, and if so, is Mark hunting a blackmailer, or worse? Wildly imaginative and with a pitch-perfect voice, Paul Tremblay's The Little Sleep is the first in a new series that casts a fresh eye on the rigors of detective work, and introduces a character who has a lot to prove--if only he can stay awake long enough to do it.
Title Author Year Published
After I’m Gone Laura Lippman 2014
Summary
The acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of The Most Dangerous Thing, I'd Know You Anywhere, and What the Dead Know returns with an addictive story that explores how one man's disappearance echoes through the lives of the five women he left behind—his wife, his daughters, and his mistress
When Felix Brewer meets nineteen-year-old Bernadette "Bambi" Gottschalk at a Valentine's Day dance in 1959, he charms her with wild promises, some of which he actually keeps. Thanks to his lucrative—if not all legal—businesses, she and their three little girls live in luxury. But on the Fourth of July in 1976, Bambi's comfortable world implodes when Felix, facing prison, vanishes.
Though Bambi has no idea where her husband—or his money—might be, she suspects one woman does: his devoted young mistress, Julie. When Julie disappears ten years to the day after Felix went on the lam, everyone assumes she's left to join her old lover—until her remains are discovered in a secluded park.
Now, twenty-six years later, Roberto "Sandy" Sanchez, a retired Baltimore detective working cold cases for some extra cash, is investigating her murder. What he discovers is a tangled web of bitterness, jealousy, resentment, greed, and longing stretching over five decades. And at its center is the man who, though long gone, has never been forgotten by the five women who loved him: the enigmatic Felix Brewer.
Felix Brewer left five women behind. Now there are four. Does at least one of them know the truth?
Title Author Year Published
The Royal Wulff Murders Keith McCafferty 2012
Summary
The Royal Wulff Murders is the first novel in the clever and fast-paced Sean Stranahan Mystery Series, for fans of C. J. Box, Craig Johnson, and Carl Hiassen. Angling is a multibillion dollar business, and no one knows that better than Keith McCafferty, the award-winning survival and outdoor skills editor of Field & Stream magazine and resident of Montana, home to the world's most fanatical fly fishing community. In McCafferty's compelling debut, a young man is found dead with a Royal Wulff trout fly stuck through his lip. Sheriff Martha Ettinger's investigation leads her to cross paths with fly fisher, painter, and has-been private detective Sean Stranahan. As the water temperature rises, the clues point them both toward Montana's big business: fly fishing. Where there's money, there's bound to be crime.
Title Author Year Published
My Soul To Take Yrsa Sigurdardottir 2009
Summary
Long-buried secrets go hand in hand with modern-day murder in this second thriller featuring attorney Thóra Gudmundsdóttir from Iceland's queen of crime fiction
When the body of a young woman—badly beaten and with pins inserted into her feet—is found at a New Age health resort in a renovated farmhouse, lawyer and single mother of two Thóra Gudmundsdóttir is called upon to represent the chief suspect, the resort's owner. But upon her arrival she encounters more than a fresh corpse—local legend has it that the resort, located in the mystical region of Snæfellsnes on Iceland's west coast, is haunted. At first Thóra dismisses the claims as nothing more than myth and superstition, but even she can't explain the bizarre occurrences she witnesses in her search for answers.
Title Author Year Published
Hell Bent William G. Tapply 2008
Summary
Boston attorney Brady Coyne finds his own past coming back to haunt his professional life when his ex-girlfriend Alex Shaw, long out of touch, reappears, wanting Brady to represent her brother. Augustine Shaw was a notable photo-journalist, happily married with two small children - until he returned from a stint in Iraq missing a hand and suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Now he's lost his career, his peace of mind and his family.
Brady is hired to see him through the divorce. The client wasn't eager to accept Brady's representation, but before the divorce proceedings are very far along, the photographer is found dead in his rented apartment, an apparent suicide.
But something isn't right and Brady starts to think the suicide was staged. With very little to go on and with everyone around him wanting to quickly close the books on what appears to be a tragic case, Brady soon finds himself alone, in the midst of one of the most dangerous situations of his entire life, and facing people who do anything to avoid being exposed.
Title Author Year PublishedThe Beekeeper's Apprentice: or, On the Segregation of the Queen (A Mary Russell Mystery)
Laurie R. King 2014
Summary
In 1915, Sherlock Holmes is retired and quietly engaged in the study of honeybees in Sussex when a young woman literally stumbles onto him on the Sussex Downs. Fifteen years old, gawky, egotistical, and recently orphaned, the young Mary Russell displays an intellect to impress even Sherlock Holmes. Under his reluctant tutelage, this very modern, twentieth-century woman proves a deft protégée and a fitting partner for the Victorian detective. They are soon called to Wales to help Scotland Yard find the kidnapped daughter of an American senator, a case of international significance with clues that dip deep into Holmes's past. Full of brilliant deduction, disguises, and danger.
Title Author Year Published
The North Water: A Novel Ian McGuire 2016
Summary
Behold the man: stinking, drunk, and brutal. Henry Drax is a harpooner on the Volunteer, a Yorkshire whaler bound for the rich hunting waters of the arctic circle. Also aboard for the first time is Patrick Sumner, an ex-army surgeon with a shattered reputation, no money, and no better option than to sail as the ship's medic on this violent, filthy, and ill-fated voyage.
In India, during the Siege of Delhi, Sumner thought he had experienced the depths to which man can stoop, but now, trapped in the wooden belly of the ship with Drax, he encounters pure evil and is forced to act. As the true purposes of the expedition become clearer, the confrontation between the two men plays out amid the freezing darkness of an arctic winter.
Title Author Year Published
The Case of the Gilded Fly Edmund Crispin 2016
Summary
It is October 1940 and, at Oxford University, the term has just begun. Robert Warner, an up-and-coming playwright known for his experimental approach, has chosen an Oxford repertory theatre for the premiere of his latest play, Metromania. Together with his cast he comes to Oxford to rehearse a week before the opening, but Warner's troupe is a motley crew of actors among whom is the beautiful but promiscuously dangerous Yseut Haskell. She causes quite a stir with her plots, intrigues and love triangles. When she is found shot dead everyone is puzzled and worried – most of the actors have had a reason to get rid of the femme fatale and few have alibis.
The police are at a loss for answers and are ready to proclaim the incident as suicide, but Gervase Fen, an Oxford don who thrives on solving mysteries, is ready to delve further.
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The Cater Street Hangman (Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Series Book 1)
Anne Perry 2011
Summary
While the Ellison girls were out paying calls and drinking tea like proper Victorian ladies, a maid in their household was strangled to death. The quiet and young Inspector Pitt investigates the scene and finds no one above suspicion. As his intense questioning causes many a composed facade to crumble, Pitt finds himself couriously drawn to pretty Charlotte Ellison. Yet, a romance between a society girl and so unsuitable a suitor was impossible in the midst of a murder....
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Before You Leap Keith Houghton 2016
Summary
Peace of mind is all Greg Cole has wanted since the murder of his twin sister, Scarlett.In his new sun-soaked Florida life, he thought he had found it. But when Scarlett’s killer is released early from prison with a cast-iron alibi, Greg realizes that his past is about to explode into his present, with terrifying consequences.
To expose the truth he must open up old wounds. As a talk therapist, Greg knows all about dark secrets, but when a childhood friendship comes to the fore and the police turn their spotlight on him, the thought of analyzing his own psyche is a disturbing prospect. How far can he trust his own memories?
With his life coming apart at the seams, and his grip on reality beginning to unravel, Greg must face the ghosts of his past if he hopes to prove his innocence and live to see another day.
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The Turkish Gambit Boris Akunin 2006 - Reprint
Summary
It is 1877, and war has broken out between Russia and the Ottoman Empire.
In the treacherous atmosphere of a Russian field army, former diplomat and detective extraordinaire Erast Fandorin stumbles upon his most confounding case. Its difficulties are only compounded by the presence of Varya Suvorova, a deadly serious (and seriously beautiful) woman with revolutionary ideals who has disguised herself as a boy in order to reunite with her respected comrade and fiancé. Even after Fandorin saves her life, Varya can hardly bear to thank such a “lackey of the throne” for his efforts.
When Varya’s fiancé is accused of espionage and faces execution, however, she must turn to Fandorin to find the real culprit . . . a mission that forces her to reckon with his courage, deductive mind, and piercing gaze.
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A Field of Darkness Cornelia Read 2007
SummaryCloset debutante and fledgling journalist Madeline Dare would be the first to tell you her money's so old there's none left. The summer of 1988 finds her in brokedown upstate New York and desperate to achieve escape velocity. When a set of dog tags turns up at the scene of a decades-unsolved double murder, she may have found that longed-for ticket out of town.
Downside: the name on the tags is that of her favorite Oyster Bay cousin, scion of a vindictive and still-powerful branch of the family. Maddie's investigation triggers a string of grisly new murders, and the trail of blue blood leads right to her door.
Title Author Year Published
A Field of Darkness Cornelia Read 2007
SummaryCloset debutante and fledgling journalist Madeline Dare would be the first to tell you her money's so old there's none left. The summer of 1988 finds her in brokedown upstate New York and desperate to achieve escape velocity. When a set of dog tags turns up at the scene of a decades-unsolved double murder, she may have found that longed-for ticket out of town.
Downside: the name on the tags is that of her favorite Oyster Bay cousin, scion of a vindictive and still-powerful branch of the family. Maddie's investigation triggers a string of grisly new murders, and the trail of blue blood leads right to her door.
Title Author Year Published
The Sweetness At the Bottom of the Pie (1ST in series) Alan Bradley 2010
SummaryMeet eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison.It is the summer of 1950-and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavia’s family calls home. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely skewered by its beak. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”
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A Superior Death (2nd in series) Nevada Barr 2003
SummaryPark ranger Anna Pigeon returns, in a mystery that unfolds in and around Lake Superior, in whose chilling depths sunken treasure comes with a deadly price. In her latest mystery, Nevada Barr sends Ranger Pigeon to a new post amid the cold, deserted, and isolated beauty of Isle Royale National Park, a remote island off the coast of Michigan known for fantastic deep-water dives of wrecked sailing vessels. Leaving behind memories of the Texas high desert and the environmental scam she helped uncover, Anna is adjusting to the cool damp of Lake Superior and the spirits and lore of the northern Midwest. But when a routine application for a diving permit reveals a grisly underwater murder, Anna finds herself 260 feet below the forbidding surface of the lake, searching for the connection between a drowned man and an age-old cargo ship. Written with a naturalist's feel for the wilderness and a keen understanding of characters who thrive in extreme conditions, A Superior Death is a passionate, atmospheric page-turner.
Title Author Year PublishedThe Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown (2nd in the series) Vaseem Khan 2016
SummaryThe delightful second novel in the Mumbai-set Baby Ganesh Detective Agency series. When the Koh-i-Noor diamond is stolen from an exhibition of the crown jewels, only one man - and his elephant - can crack the case....
For centuries the Koh-i-Noor diamond has set man against man and king against king. Now part of the British Crown Jewels, the priceless gem is a prize that many have killed to possess. So when the Crown Jewels go on display in Mumbai, security is everyone's principal concern. And yet, on the very day Inspector Chopra visits the exhibition, the diamond is stolen from under his nose. The heist is daring and seemingly impossible. The hunt is on for the culprits. But it soon becomes clear that only one man - and his elephant - can possibly crack this case....
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Closed Casket: A New Hercule Poirot Mystery (2nd in "new" series) Sophie Hannah 2016
SummaryThe world's most famous detective returns in this ingenious, stylish, and altogether delicious mystery from the author of the instant bestseller The Monogram Murders ("I was thrilled" -- Gillian Flynn). Hannah was given permission by the Christie family."What I intend to say to you will come as a shock..."
With these words, Lady Athelinda Playford -- one of the world's most beloved children's authors -- springs a surprise on the lawyer entrusted with her will. As guests arrive for a party at her Irish mansion, Lady Playford has decided to cut off her two children without a penny . . . and leave her vast fortune to someone else: an invalid who has only weeks to live.
Among Lady Playford's visitors are two strangers: the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, and Inspector Edward Catchpool of Scotland Yard. Neither knows why he has been invited -- until Poirot begins to wonder if Lady Playford expects a murder. But why does she seem so determined to provoke a killer? And why -- when the crime is committed despite Poirot's best efforts to stop it -- does the identity of the victim make no sense at all?
