Category Archives: Reading . . .

Exposure: Navajo Crime-Solving

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This is the second in Ramona Emerson’s planned trilogy about Navajo crime scene photographer Rita Todacheene, a follow-on to Shutter, her impressive debut. Exposure again takes you on an intense ridealong with Rita, who uses her camera to meticulously and unflinchingly document the most gruesome tragedies. You may believe that the images themselves suggest clues to the commission of these murders, or you can accept Rita’s understanding, that the spirits of the dead are guiding her to see beneath the surface. Either way, you know she believes those ghosts are with her. (She and another popular indigenous author, Marcie Rendon, have discussed how their cultural backgrounds give them a different, intriguing way of seeing and interpreting the world, which I wrote about a few weeks back.)

Rita’s colleagues in the Albuquerque, New Mexico, police department are less-than-thrilled with her insights. They like simple solutions and quickly closed investigations. Worse, she’s not a cop. Their hostility has led to the requirement that she undergo psychological counselling to combat her “ghosts.” (Labelling a woman crazy in order to dismiss what she says is an old, old story, of course.) To keep busy while on this furlough, she’s been working in the office of the Medical Examiner, one person unable to dismiss her so lightly.

The story opens with Rita being unexpectedly called out to a murder scene. A mother, father, and their six children have been shot to death. The police believe the oldest son, alive, blood-spattered, and holding a gun, is the culprit. The spirits of the children, one in particular, lead Rita to a different theory of the crime.

In parallel with Rita’s story, alternating chapters recount the story of a man who, in childhood, witnessed the violent deaths of his family, followed by a back-breaking and spirit-quenching ordeal at a religious orphanage. An adult now, he’s a lay Brother doing outreach among the impoverished residents of Gallup, New Mexico. He’s determined to help the indigent people he encounters—alcoholic, too little food and shelter, and too much desperation. For them, wintertime is a deadly trial, and death too often comes from exposure (another meaning of the book’s title).

Meanwhile, the dead children so torment Rita that she returns home to her grandmother, who lives on the reservation, north of Gallup. There, perhaps, she can start to heal. As the clouds over her spirit begin to lift, she’s asked by a female Gallup police detective to help figure out a set of murders in the town.

Emerson so effectively describes the starkly beautiful country and the uncompromising weather, that you may need a hot cup of something as you read. She integrates Navajo traditions and beliefs into the modern tale in a way that gives science (the medical examiner), belief (the Navajo), and procedure (the police) their due. All three come together in Rita. But they are not easily reconciled, and her struggles make for a unique and compelling story.

I’m not personally a big believer in the supernatural, but I do believe unexplainable events happen. It’s Rita’s belief in the spirits that matters, though, and they have never led her astray.

The quality and sensitivity of the writing is much to be appreciated, and it persists despite the sometimes brutal subject matter. Shutter, Emerson’s 2023 debut novel, was nominated for numerous awards in the crime and mystery field, frequently appeared on “Best Books of the Year” lists, and received recognition from both the National Book Award and PEN Literary Awards programs. A Navajo (Diné) writer and filmmaker, she lives in Albuquerque.

Relatedly, the new season of Dark Winds, based on the Tony Hillerman characters, was scheduled to start 3/9 on AMC. We watched past seasons on Amazon Prime. Looking forward to the new one!

A (Fictional) Trip to Japan

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The art, architecture, and traditions of the Land of the Rising Sun have always fascinated me, which gives the backdrops of these stories added pleasure.

The Puzzle Box by Danielle Trussoni

How you feel about puzzles will likely color your reaction to Danielle Trussoni’s new thriller, a follow-on to her well-received 2023 book, The Puzzle Master. I love puzzles, included a puzzle box in my mystery-thriller, Architect of Courage, and thought I’d found the perfect read.

Mike Brink is a New York City puzzle creator who suffered a brain injury that left him with the extremely rare “acquired savant” syndrome. Savants have extraordinary cognitive abilities in a single field. For Mike Brink, it’s solving puzzles, along with the supporting mathematics. Life and relationships aren’t easy for him and, interestingly, Mike would prefer to be less “special.”

The Imperial family has asked a US-raised young Japanese woman, Sakura Nakamoto, to convince Mike to try to open the Dragon Puzzle Box, a feat attempted in secret only every twelve years. Renowned puzzle experts have tried and failed, and failure is fatal.

In Japan, a woman named Ume is training a small cadre of young women to be warriors as ruthless as herself, female samurai. They believe whatever is hidden in the Dragon Puzzle Box can restore the samurai to power. Meanwhile, another powerful antagonist also wants the Box’s contents, in order to pursue one of those “fate of the world hangs in the balance” missions that strain my credulity. Even if Mike can open the Box without dying in the process, the dangers will be only just beginning.

I like the elements of Japanese culture that Trussoni includes in this tale. She lived several years in Japan and the story environment certainly carries the feel of authenticity. A “foreign” setting is almost always extra exciting, simply because the rules are different there, and they are very different indeed in the Imperial court setting!

The Labyrinth House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji

No doubt Christie, Chandler, Sayers, Hammett, and their brethren would be quite comfortable reading this story, inspired by Golden Age traditions, the fourth of the author’s Bizarre House Mysteries.

The house of prominent Japanese mystery writer Miyagaki Yōtarō was constructed as a giant labyrinth (maps are helpfully provided to the guests—and readers). For his sixtieth birthday, he plans a celebration involving talented young writers he has mentored, his editor/critic Utayama Hideyuki, and mystery fan Shimada Kiyoshi.

The arriving guests meet Miyagaki’s secretary who makes the astonishing revelation that their host, dying of cancer, has committed suicide. Miyagaki’s posthumous instructions ask them not to call the police for five days and not to try to leave. He also asks the four authors to use the days to write the best detective story they can, which Utayama and Shimada will judge. The winner will receive half of Miyagaki’s considerable estate. Initially nonplussed, the writers quickly rally and commit to the project. Thus, you have a classic locked-room mystery. It doesn’t tax your imagination to guess the partygoers will begin dropping like flies.

Utayama and Shimada take the lead in investigating, but neither can be sure the other isn’t the mysterious killer. Most puzzling is that the positioning of each body and the cause of death mimics the newly deceased’s draft story.

I learned less about Japanese culture than I might have expected and quite a bit more about the personalities of ambitious authors than I might have wanted. Miyagaki well understood what he was dealing with when he set up this unusual challenge. Each murder necessitates a lengthy deconstruction of the surrounding events, the location of other guests at the probable time of the crime, and its relation to the story begun on their word processors. It begins to feel like an overlong unravelling, but all points to a classic fair-play conclusion. Will you figure it out before Utayama and Shimada do?

With Our Bellies Full and the Fire Dying

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I must have gained ten pounds reading this collection of short stories by Debra H. Goldstein. Though she was raised in New Jersey and Michigan (and is an alumna of my alma mater, the University of Michigan—Go Blue!), she spent much of her career in the South, which has definitely seeped into her story-telling. It’s a south of pie auctions, bar-b-cue, fatal seafood casseroles, and corn pudding recipes over which deadly fights can erupt. She corrals these culinary delights under the broad heading: “Tales of Sinning and Redemption,” and a particularly luscious cake is the recipe for redemption in one of them.

What’s most fun about reading this collection is how varied the stories are, even with the frequent appearance of something delicious. They’ve appeared in many collections, some not widely distributed, so it’s a new and invigorating experience to read them. One that’s particularly apt for Mardi Gras tomorrow is “Who Dat? Dat the Indian Chief?” about the Mardi Gras Indians and their elaborate and in this case, unexpectedly valuable, costumes.

A number of the stories feature children, precocious ones for the most part, like the son of the sheriff who not only discovers a body, but analyzes the crime scene based on his Magic of Forensic Science book. One I especially liked was “The Girls in Cabin Three,” made up solely of letters home from a teenage camper, whose reports must have horrified her parents!

Although the stories are short, Goldstein loads in some compelling surprises, as in her story about a homeless encampment, “So Beautiful or So What,” where characters aren’t necessarily what they seem. Do they all get redemption? The lucky ones do.

Overall, Goldstein’s writing is clear and entertaining, capturing her characters and their outlook on life—good, bad, self-centered, or magnanimous—most convincingly. Very possibly, her years as a judge trained her to see through people’s outer presentation to their core, which skill she now uses to great effect in these entertaining stories. Or perhaps that skill made her a good jurist—whichever, her readers are now the beneficiaries.

Order the collection here.

Delicious UK Crime Fiction

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What Doesn’t Kill Us by Ajay Close

Ajay Close’s new crime thriller is inspired by the notorious 1970s Yorkshire Ripper case, which prompted a massive and massively inefficient manhunt. In that case, the police eventually identified the killer, but were severely criticized for many aspects of their investigation.

Close’s fictional treatment contains elements of a police procedural, as the authorities stumble along almost completely devoid of clues and full of misplaced emphases. What sets this book apart, though, is the equal, if not greater, attention to the cultural milieu in which the crimes occurred. In that respect, it is a scathing social history.

Close has achieved an inspired juxtaposition here, using as her principal protagonist young police constable Liz Seeley, attached to the task force investigating a series of prostitutes’ murders. She knows firsthand about mistreated women, and, to escape her abusive boyfriend, she has moved to a communal house in Leeds, occupied by six feminists who hate the cops.

The attitude toward women that Liz experiences in the police department—condescending, salacious, misogynistic—is a dark side of male behavior. They don’t take much interest in the dead and engage in victim-blaming until the murder of a middle-class girl who is most definitely not in the sex trade. Liz is trapped between two behavioral and attitudinal extremes.

While male readers might want to give themselves a pass, because they don’t share those extreme beliefs or behaviors, they undoubtedly have seen it, may have tolerated it, and very possibly laughed it off, even if uncomfortably. In susceptible minds, endemic disrespect and hostility end up where Close’s investigators find them.

It’s a bit of a difficult read in the beginning because Close uses the street language and slang of Yorkshire residents of fifty years ago. But it is well worth the effort. It’s an important book, especially when we still receive too-frequent reminders of how willing some people (people who ought to know better) are to trot out the old prejudices and gender slurs, half a century later.

The Queen of Fives by Alex Hay

Now, escape the 21st c. for a romp in late-Victorian London. In this entertaining historical crime novel, Quinn le Blanc is the Queen of Fives, head of a once-large and notorious group of female con women, now reduced to her, her major domo, Mr. Silk, and a few loosely connected paid confederates of dubious loyalty.

Quinn’s actions are guided by a Rulebook created by her predecessor Queens, which lays out the rules for any number of confidence schemes, all of which follow a prescribed path and have in common the goal of obtaining something of value. Preferably a lot of value.

Quinn has selected an aloof young duke from the richest family of England as her quarry, and through an elaborate set of stratagems and disguises, sets out to trick him into marriage. It isn’t only his money she’s after; she’d like to derail his do-gooder step-mother whose charities are bent on tearing down old houses, including the traditional seat of the Queen of Fives.

But if the course of true love never did run smooth, neither in this case does the course of false love. A mysterious man, the duke’s suspicious sister, the duke’s secret love all conspire against the Queen. What’s most fun are the clever plots and quick-change artistry of the characters. Pure fun and mischief.

Society of Lies — Hometown Thriller

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Reading a book set in your own home town is always kind of a kick, and people with a Princeton connection may want to read it for that reason alone. I enjoyed the inside references to places in the Princeton area in Lauren Ling Brown’s new thriller, but the personalities she describes don’t ring true. She makes clear that Society of Lies doesn’t reflect either real characters or social groups at Princeton University, where she did her undergraduate work, and I hope that’s true! Still, you’re forced to wonder to what extent her college experience is reflected here. Like the pair of sisters who are the novel’s main characters, and who encounter prejudice and insults, the author is Black and Asian.

Older sister Maya is visiting the campus a decade after her own graduation to witness the graduation of her sister, Naomi. The return to Princeton immediately triggers waves of memories, especially those surrounding the eating club—Sterling—where both Maya and Naomi were members. Maya also is haunted by the unexpected death of one of her friends ten years earlier. (Eating clubs—combination dining hall and social club—are a nearly 150-year-old tradition at Princeton.) Brown’s fictional Sterling Club is the elite of the elite and has a corrupt secret society at its heart. With all the positives that membership in a club like Sterling can offer, there’s always a downside. It’s tempting to misuse that influence.

This is all brought back to Maya in the story’s first chapter when, on the eve of graduation, Naomi is found drowned. The story timeline ping-pongs between Naomi’s last few months on campus, and Maya’s own university experiences. The similarities can make it hard to keep events straight, despite the clearly labeled short chapters. The extent of drinking and drug use—prescription and otherwise—may be realistic, I can’t say. But when the characters’ resulting confusion and flawed memories repeatedly lead to story red herrings, it became tiresome.

Although Brown has some surprises in store, she plays fair and provides the clues needed to back up the story’s conclusions. Although her writing style is promising, her prose is weighted down with unnecessary verbiage that makes the going seem slow. It isn’t necessary to describe characters’ emotions repeatedly, when their reactions are patently understandable. We’ve all (probably) had friends who were stuck in a romantic rut, like Naomi is with Liam, her boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, boyfriend again, ex-again, and we’ve all (probably) eventually lost patience with those friends.

US Short Story Authors Star!

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Now in its 2024 edition, The Best American Mystery and Suspense, an annual compilation of notable mystery and suspense stories, has evolved quite a bit since Steph Cha took over from long-time series editor Otto Penzler. He now publishes a rival anthology, The Best Mystery Stories of the Year. The publisher (and readers like me, too) believed Penzler’s long-running series needed a refresher, to involve more diverse perspectives and sources, and to include stories addressing more contemporary themes. Truthfully, the number of magazines and anthologies devoted to crime fiction as well as the literary magazines and special collections that publish occasional stories in this genre, means that no matter what selection criteria editors adopt, they’ll likely have a wealth of excellent stories to choose from. Cosby, as guest editor, and Cha made some excellent picks for this volume.

In my not-disinterested opinion, the pre-Cha era sadly neglected the stories of female writers. Since her tenure, that issue has been well addressed, along with the work of more diverse authors and themes. In the 2024 edition, two-thirds of the stories are by women authors, compared to one-third in Penzler’s most recent collection (much better than he used to do, at least). Contemporary problems—toxic phone apps, violent street protests, incriminating blog posts—are here and have a “story behind the headlines” feel to them. Several have adopted innovative or atypical presentation styles.

I particularly liked “For I Hungered, and Ye Gave Me” by Barrett Bowlin, which consists of verbatim answers to unstated (but easily guessed—correctly?) questions about a possible crime, and Alyssa Cole’s “Just a Girl,” which shows, via TikTok and podcast excerpts, YouTube transcripts, and the like, the mushrooming of a vicious online attack on an essentially blameless co-ed. Stanton McCaffery’s moving “Will I See the Birds When I’m Gone” simply comprises an incarcerated man’s letters to his neglectful mother, written over a 23-year period.

Women writers may be more likely to talk about the extremes and entanglements of mother love and the long-term consequences of rape, as in the stories by Mary Thorson, Latoya Watkins, or Tananarive Due. They show that, regardless of circumstances, children still have that pull on their mothers, whether for good or ill.

The traditional “perfect murder” theme also appears, as in Abby Geni’s clever “The Body Farm,” which involves some grisly research, and Nils Gilbertson’s “Lovely and Useless Things,” which takes place in a speakeasy during Prohibition. Some perfect murders are successful, and others are not. Shannon Taft’s “Monster” is a satisfying example. I’m not sure whether Diana Gould intended “Possessory Credit,” her story about a scheming screenwriter and would-be perfect-murderer to be humorous, but I laughed out loud at the predicament he created. “Baby Trap” by Toni LP Kelner is delightfully clever and begins with a Reddit post. More 2024 vibes!

I’ve enjoyed Jordan Harper’s novels, so was poised to like his story, “My Savage Year,” and did. It was one of several involving adolescent confusions, secrets, and bad judgment, including Rebecca Turkewitz’s boarding school nightmare, “Sarah Lane’s School for Girls.” Early mistakes can have a long tail, as the protagonists in these stories learn, especially the suicide hotline counselor in Lisa Unger’s “Unknown Caller.”

Amongst all these tales are several solid traditional mysteries, such as “Scarlet Ribbons” by Megan Abbott about a haunting (or is it?), Frankie Y. Bailey’s “Matter of Trust,” along with Gar Anthony Haywood’s “With the Right Bait” (marital relationships, loosely), Nick Kolakowski’s “Scorpions” (lure of the dark side), Karen Harrington’s “The Mysterious Disappearance of Jason Whetstone” (sibling rivalry—again involving a disgruntled author, humph!), and Bobby Mathews’s “The Funeral Suit” (Western gunslingers).

There’s a lot more to each of these stories, of course, than a capsule summary can convey. As SA Cosby says in his introduction, it’s “magic that happens for a brief moment, like a shooting star streaking across the sky, when you read a story that grabs you by the hand and says, ‘Come with me, see what I have to show you.’” A word about the story sources. Seventeen different publications are represented by these 20 stories, none of them the traditional short mystery story magazines. In the list of 30 additional distinguished stories from 2023 are 21 more publications, including the well-known Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, and Mystery Tribune. Along with new outlets are new writers—a crime and mystery lover’s dream.

Where Legends Lie

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My friend Michael A. Black, a retired Chicago police officer, writes crime fiction and westerns. Now, I grew up with television (and movie!) westerns and spent a lot of time in what I thought of as the West—that is, West Texas where my grandparents lived—so I have a kind of sentimental attachment to the genre. When I was a kid, it seemed heroes and villains were made of very different stuff, and there was no doubt which was which. You could tell by their clothing, if nothing else (think of the Lone Ranger’s perfectly pressed shirt. What?) I met Roy Rogers and Trigger when I was 3. Clint Eastwood and the man with no name spaghetti Westerns began to add ambiguity and complexity, but in recent years, I found Walt Longmire and fell in love again.

Naturally, I’ve eagerly read several of Mike Black’s Westerns and, in his latest one, he pulls off quite a comfortable literary marriage. He manages to combine both traditional Western tropes and the 20th century’s most powerful cultural interpreter and mis-interpreter—Hollywood!

This is one of those split-narrative books that, when you’re reading one thread—say, events that occurred in Contention City, Arizona, in 1880—and the next chapter switches to the other narrative—the 1913 movie-making about those events—you’re momentarily jarred and possibly a bit disappointed because the 1880 (or 1913) story is so captivating.

In 1913, a veteran of the war in the Philippines, Jim Bishop, arrives statewide having no discernible job prospects. But his buddy has a relative working as a chef for a movie company in southern California. He’s counting on a job there and thinks they may take on Jim, too. En route, they befriend, of all people, journalist and fiction-writer Ambrose Bierce, always up for adventure, who disappeared that year. Jim and his friend get the movie jobs and Jim, especially, proves himself useful to the film company in various ways.

In 1880, Sheriff Lon Dayton hopes to end the reign of one of the Arizona’s outlaw gangs by offering the governor’s amnesty if they will turn themselves in. They agree. Unbeknownst to Dayton, the Mayor and his unscrupulous henchmen have other plans.

The chance to experience (fictional) 1880 events and the filmmakers’ recreation of them provides a nice contrast between two realities. The title of the book suggests that what we know about past events can be both unearthed, where they lie, and untrue, as they fib.

I greatly enjoyed the character of Jim, whom you first meet in a truly hair-raising battle overseas, which displays not only Black’s skill in creating a vivid scene, but reflects the multiple aims of a soldier at war. Staying alive, sure, but also saving whom you can and appreciating the enemy too. Dayton is a western hero in the full Gary Cooper tradition. No wonder Hollywood latched onto him like a rattlesnake on a mouse. If you’re looking for a story packed with adventure, as well as a reflection on how we mold the past to suit our present, you’ve found it!

Order from Amazon here.

Precipice

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One of the best books I’ve read this year is Robert Harris’s new political novel, Precipice. He has a penchant for looking at historical fact through the lens of fiction, and in this instance has a fascinating trove of detail to work with. The book begins in July 1914, when 27-year-old Venetia Stanley receives one of her frequent letters from UK Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, 35 years her senior. The story isn’t a thriller in the conventional sense, but the stakes are so high, the risks so great, and the potential for serious crimes no more than a hair’s-breadth away that it earns its place in that category.

As the story begins, Asquith has been Prime Minister for six years. The country—is mere weeks from the beginning of the military catastrophe of World War I. Not only is the world “on the precipice” of disaster, Asquith himself is courting political calamity, with many, many tough calculations and decisions looming. Yet he finds time and mental energy to devote to this astonishing epistolary romance. It isn’t terribly surprising that a charismatic, handsome politician would have an affair. Goodness knows, political leaders are hardly models of marital fidelity. The surprise is the degree of his obsession.

The public first learned of this correspondence when about half the letters were published in 1982, and history buffs may be familiar with this story, but it was new to me. Thus, I was particular struck by Harris’s assurance that all the Prime Minister’s letters quoted are authentic, as are excerpts from other official documents. On his last day at Number 10, after being ousted by ambitious David Lloyd George, Asquith burned Venetia’s letters to him. Now Harris has created her half of the conversation in this book.

Asquith writes Venetia not just an occasional letter, but an astonishing 560 over a three-year period, at times as many as three a day. He writes them during deliberations of the war council, when he should be writing speeches, during cabinet meetings, and he sends her copies of telegrams and other official and secret correspondence. At critical points in the government’s deliberations leading up to and during the war, he is severely distracted.

You may start out with some sympathy for them both. He is under almost unbearable pressure, surrounded by officials whose motives are partially or wholly self-interested. He cannot confide in his wife, as Harris describes her, because she is highly opinionated and indiscreet. She wants so badly to be an insider, but her behavior assures she cannot be. When he first became Prime Minister, she referred to herself as the Prime Ministress, but he soon put a stop to that.

Harris invents a fictional Scotland Yard operative, Paul Deemer, who’s assigned to read their correspondence, which is being intercepted, and determine whether it’s being leaked to German spies. It’s filled with endearments, but also contains war plans, troop movements, and political maneuverings. Venetia knows more about what is going on at the top of British government than almost anyone else. Plus, she’s privy to the PM’s take on things, which in his hands-off, wait-and-see management style, plenty of other people would like to know.

Venetia, as Harris portrays her, justifies her closeness to Prime, as she calls him, because she serves a unique role as his confidant and safety valve. He relies on her judgment and loyalty. If that were the extent of their relationship (the full extent is unknown, but if you read between the lines of his correspondence, you may have an opinion)—it would be irregular, possibly traitorous, but understandable. Gradually, however, his preoccupation with her becomes oppressive.

As wartime events mount in their seriousness, the burden of all her special knowledge becomes almost unbearable, and she resolves to create a life of her own. She takes up a nursing course with an eye to tending wounded soldiers in France, a move the PM finds almost intolerable. She can no longer be available to him as often as he would wish and his letters take on a whining, wheedling tone, that you may find more appropriate to a fifteen-year-old boy, not a mature, successful man in his sixties. You may have to keep reminding yourself that these are his actual words.

As an experienced writer of historical fiction, Harris has a good eye for period detail and the telling anecdote that will create believable, almost overpowering drama. In a great many thrillers, you may not care all that much about the characters, but in Precipice, you do and you must. It’s a terrific book.

Order from Amazon here.

Last Night at Villa Lucia by Simon McCleave

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What could be more appealing than a murder mystery set in an elegant villa high on a hill overlooking the Tuscan countryside? Prolific crime novelist Simon McCleave’s Last Night at Villa Lucia feels like a vacation from the first page.

A few flies in the ointment—or in this case, vodka—soon appear. The middle-aged woman who owns Villa Lucia has a significant drinking problem, once controlled with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous, but now seriously relapsed. This, and the death that follows, is all foreshadowed in an unnecessary prologue, lifted from a place well into the story. Chapter One rewinds to two days earlier with the arrival of a new set of guests—the overbearing, deeply entitled Harry Collard, his mousy wife Zoe, and their handsome nineteen-year-old son, Charlie.

When the family arrives at the villa, they find their hostess, Cerys, who’s divorced, and her luscious daughter Lowri, about Charlie’s age. One plot point boldly forecasts itself from the moment Harry meets Lowri.

So. At least until the police arrive, you have two couples (one dad absent, but very “present” in the minds of his ex-wife and daughter). Two young adults. And, rounding out the cast, the two people who keep the place humming—Lucia De Nardi, the maid, who grew up in the villa before her uncle lost possession of it, a sore point for sure, and her husband, Lorenzo, who has a sketchy past and takes care of the pool and the gardens.

You see some of the English husbands’ arrogant behavior, in real time, in flashback, and in what the women say about them. This story might fail the Bechdel test—which checks whether a book or movie “features at least two female characters who have a conversation about something other than a man.” (Thanks, Wikipedia.) Granted, Cerys and Zoe do occasionally talk about fashion or food.

You know from the prologue that someone ends up in the infinity pool, and they aren’t swimming. That death occurs, about two days into the Collards’ stay, and by then you probably have a favored candidate for drowning and a universe of potential motives.

McCleave effectively conveys the enervating heat, the villa’s isolation, and the effects of too much alcohol, so that the arrival of the sober Policia di Stato Detective Franco Saachi is a relief. Naturally, the villa occupants don’t tell him everything. At least not right off. In a postscript, McCleave tells readers that his intentions for this book were to explore toxic masculinity, alcoholism, and abusive relationships. He achieved this goal, with a few caveats. Making both husbands so very toxic doesn’t give the narrative much nuance. It was good to see Cerys and Zoe open up to each other, and good for them, too. Cerys’s preoccupation with alcohol became a bit redundant, but it was probably an accurate way to portray this particular addiction. McCleave does give his characters some grace at the book’s end, as a reward—to you and them—for suffering through their travails. Meanwhile, you can enjoy the spectacular setting.

Correction Line

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Craig Terlson’s crime thriller, Correction Line, underscores how badly off track people can become if they just keep doing what they’re doing. Surveyors learned this in a late-1800s project to survey the vast prairies of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba and divide them into equal sections. They soon realized the longitudinal (north-south) meridians they established would converge as they reached higher latitudes, so that truly square sections would be impossible to achieve. They needed correction lines.

Just as the survey’s meridian lines met at a single point, the characters in Terlson’s story converge on a destructive human nexus named Dave. Like a black hole, he draws people and their energy to him. Being involved with Dave is extremely risky business. His career has gone from bringing in liquor, to marijuana, to hard drugs, to human trafficking. Dave doesn’t appear all that much in the story, yet he is everywhere in it. He’s the motivating force behind almost everything Terlson’s fascinating cast of characters does.

Terlson uses the wide open prairie of western Canada to great effect, as the characters range over its empty spaces in their pickup trucks and old Dodges and Pontiacs. Much of the novel is set several decades ago, and the gas-guzzlers cruise the surveyors’ grid and take the gentle curves—the correction lines—that adjust the strict geometry. He describes the stunning sunrises, the farm fields and grasslands that stretch to the horizon, and the lonely dwellings. When it seems you can see forever, the sky becomes more present. Terlson’s descriptions are more than painting pretty pictures. You need this solid grounding in the familiar, because what the characters are up to will stretch your perspective.

A young woman named Lucy has a past relationship with Dave, but she’s disappeared. Now he has cancer, and he wants her back. Alive. Lucy’s late mother made a strange potion he thinks will cure him, and Lucy makes something similar, but does it work? Dave puts his best man, Lawrence, on the job, and Lawrence recruits the rootless Curtis to help him search.

Whether she can replicate her mother’s strange mixture or not, her real talent is precognition. Maybe she doesn’t know exactly what bad thing is going to happen, but she knows something bad is heading her way. And it isn’t Roy, the failing door-to-door encyclopedia salesman who’s taken up with her.

Roy is a good guy in way over his head, with the opportunity to do something worthwhile for a change. He also has a sixth sense when trouble is brewing. Of course, this realization isn’t much of a stretch, when violent armed men are lurking about. Houses get destroyed. Cars, even big ones, don’t have a chance. Hospitals are visited. Much of the drama plays out along the roads surrounded by those endless fields, and, as you gradually get to know these dodgy characters, you come to like most of them too. You may yearn for their travels to make the slight angle of correction that would bend their lives in new directions—somewhere Dave is not.

Order from Amazon here.