Books Read in 2023: Four-Star Mysteries

Still not despairing, precisely, but I do suddenly hate my hair, my face, and every single thing in my house. I am wise enough (for now) to realize that this is probably not the right time to throw out the contents of my house (not all of them anyway), repaint all the walls, dye my hair blue and get a facelift. For now I have just cleared Christmas decorations off some shelves and not put the stuff that usually lives there back, because I am seized with decision paralysis every time I try to arrange anything. The multiple sides of my decorating personality are at war with each other. I have some things that really need to be sitting in solitary serenity on a white shelf, but that kind of space doesn't exist in this house. And yet I can't quite bring myself to give all the things away, so they sit in uneasy communion with lesser entities or languish undisplayed. It's a conundrum.

Could not be happier about the comments on the previous post though. For a few years, even though people I knew would clamour in excitement about the book review posts, they would get very few comments. That was fine, I still enjoyed composing them, they're not for everyone, but it would feel ever so slightly discouraging. I started prefacing the book review posts with regular blog stuff and then people would comment about the books and I'd be like "how dare they disregard my hilarious regardings, that shit was funny" (I'm impossible to please, have never claimed anything otherwise). Then lo and behold, the thing that brings us all together is body lotion containers! 

It is, in fact, Aveeno that I use (it used to be Vaseline Intensive Care, and I can't actually remember why I switched). I am going to try the funnel thing, but I still suspect the result is going to be lotion all over the bathroom counter. And 'spaddy daddy?' *immature snicker*. Brilliant invention if it works, name needs workshopping. Ohhh, it's actually 'spatty daddy', like spatula. Still problematic, imo.

Okay, is American Hippo actually good? It was Magic for Liars that I read, and I didn't like it as much as I hoped I would, and then I heard about the hippo book and it sounded gimmicky, and I didn't love the first book enough to pursue it. But OBVIOUSLY it sounds insanely cool. (Marilyn added her vote to Engie's before I published this. Hippo book incoming.

I was going to do horror next, but there's a lot of it and I've been pretty niche so far, so starting with mysteries.

Four-Star Mystery/Thriller

When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole. Synopsis from Goodreads: Rear Window meets Get Out in this gripping thriller from a critically acclaimed and New York Times Notable author, in which the gentrification of a Brooklyn neighborhood takes on a sinister new meaning... Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she's known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community's past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block--her neighbor Theo. But Sydney and Theo's deep dive into history quickly becomes a dizzying descent into paranoia and fear. Their neighbors may not have moved to the suburbs after all, and the push to revitalize the community may be more deadly than advertised. When does coincidence become conspiracy? Where do people go when gentrification pushes them out? Can Sydney and Theo trust each other--or themselves--long enough to find out before they too disappear?

-”Slavery. Fucking. Theme park.

Black America, the theme park, was billed as ‘an opportunity to become familiar with plantation life for those of the North who belong to a generation to which the word slavery has but an indefinite and hazy meaning.’ This was, like, twenty years after slavery ended, mind you. I mean, I too get nostalgic when an eighties jam starts playing on the radio, but these motherfuckers really needed to reminisce about owning humans?”

Three and a half, rounded up. I liked the first half a lot - the concept makes so much sense to me. Like, gentrification is evil in many ways, so let's make it ACTUALLY evil. Sydney is a great character, flawed, messy, strong, and the depiction of the neighbourhood regulars, and then the interlopers, is so realistic it's horrific all on its own. The message board stuff could have been lifted from one of my own Facebook groups. Sydney's rage and helplessness is palpable, and I like that Theo is a sort of stuck-in-the-middle bridge who wants to help but is kind of cringey. The second half lost me a little - different in tone and any hint of subtlety basically goes out the window. 

The Last Party (DC Morgan #1) by Clare Mackintosh. Synopsis from Goodreads: At midnight, one of them is dead. By morning, all of them are suspects. It's a party to end all parties, but not everyone is here to celebrate. On New Year’s Eve, Rhys Lloyd has a house full of guests. His vacation homes on Mirror Lake are a success, and he’s generously invited the village to drink champagne with their wealthy new neighbors.  But by midnight, Rhys will be floating dead in the freezing waters of the lake. On New Year’s Day, Ffion Morgan has a village full of suspects. The tiny community is her home, so the suspects are her neighbors, friends and family—and Ffion has her own secrets to protect. With a lie uncovered at every turn, soon the question isn’t who wanted Rhys dead…but who finally killed him.

"It's as thought there's a series of doors inside her head, each one locking away one part of her life and enabling her to function in another."

Better than I was expecting, honestly. The layer of intricate social commentary really added to the depth of the story. The lives of the residents and Ffion's divided loyalty as a police woman and a citizen of the town are as interesting as who actually committed the murder, in the end.

The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer. Synopsis from Goodreads: Lucy Hart knows better than anyone what it’s like to grow up without parents who loved her. In a childhood marked by neglect and loneliness, Lucy found her solace in books, namely the Clock Island series by Jack Masterson. Now a twenty-six-year-old teacher’s aide, she is able to share her love of reading with bright, young students, especially seven-year-old Christopher Lamb, who was left orphaned after the tragic death of his parents. Lucy would give anything to adopt Christopher, but even the idea of becoming a family seems like an impossible dream without proper funds and stability. But be careful what you wish for. . .Just when Lucy is about to give up, Jack Masterson announces he’s finally written a new book. Even better, he’s holding a contest at his home on the real Clock Island, and Lucy is one of the four lucky contestants chosen to compete to win the one and only copy.

-"In Hugo's opinion, it was never too soon for children to learn their ABCs and their female Spanish-Mexican surrealists."

You know how sometimes a book's edges are softened and burnished by memory? I think the opposite might have happened here. The resonance with The Westing Game obviously sucked me in. Sometimes I really like reading a book and other people's criticisms have no effect. This time they had an effect. I had already thought it was a sweet idea and, although the execution could have used a little more depth and complexity, it was a nice story. After thinking about it more, I think it might be a little too real to justify the unrealistic parts and a little too fairy-tale-ish to justify presenting it as a real-world story. 

What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall. Synopsis from Goodreads: Naomi Shaw used to believe in magic. Twenty-two years ago, she and her two best friends, Cassidy and Olivia, spent the summer roaming the woods, imagining a world of ceremony and wonder. They called it the Goddess Game. The summer ended suddenly when Naomi was attacked. Miraculously, she survived her seventeen stab wounds and lived to identify the man who had hurt her. The girls’ testimony put away a serial killer, wanted for murdering six women. They were heroes. For decades afterward, the friends have kept a secret worth killing for. But now Olivia wants to tell, and Naomi sets out to find out what really happened in the woods―no matter how dangerous the truth turns out to be.

This was a perfectly good thriller. Better than many I've read. Some good observations about small towns and classism, and a vividly drawn hot mess of a self-destructive protagonist (justifiably so). It all goes a little everything-but-the-kitchen-sink towards the end, but that's okay. The only reason I'm ever so slightly disappointed is that I really, really love this author's youth horror fiction and I was hoping for a touch of that here. In the closing acknowledgements she thanks someone for telling her she should be a thriller writer, and I really hope she doesn't just do that now.

Descent by Tim Johnston. Synopsis from Goodreads: The Rocky Mountains have cast their spell over the Courtlands, a young family from the plains taking a last summer vacation before their daughter begins college. For eighteen-year-old Caitlin, the mountains loom as the ultimate test of her runner’s heart, while her parents hope that so much beauty, so much grandeur, will somehow repair a damaged marriage. But when Caitlin and her younger brother, Sean, go out for an early morning run and only Sean returns, the mountains become as terrifying as they are majestic, as suddenly this family find themselves living the kind of nightmare they’ve only read about in headlines or seen on TV. As their world comes undone, the Courtlands are drawn into a vortex of dread and recrimination. Why weren’t they more careful? What has happened to their daughter? Is she alive? Will they ever know? Caitlin’s disappearance, all the more devastating for its mystery, is the beginning of the family’s harrowing journey down increasingly divergent and solitary paths until all that continues to bind them together are the questions they can never bring themselves to ask: At what point does a family stop searching? At what point will a girl stop fighting for her life?

-”By its regularity it had become an unspoken fact of the ranch, like the hills themselves – although once, early on, Grant had commented on the bird, and the old man had grown silent and still. Then he told Grant that his wife liked to say that if she must come back to this earth and not to heaven she hoped God would let her come back as such a bird – hawk or eagle or falcon. And if she did come back as one of these, said Emmet, she hoped she would have no memory of ever having lived as a human woman. She wanted to look down from the air and know the things a bird should know and nothing of what men thought or did, but just to watch them as a bird would, from up high, no more curious and no less wary than any other creature.”

Oh hell, I don't know. I felt a bit like I was sinking further and further into quicksand and the only way out was through. Some really lovely writing, but also a sense that this was determined to be a literary elegaic piece of prose and then at the last minute went NO but wait, I have other sides, you don't know me! A lot of it was kind of disconnected (ooh, maybe that was the point). I'm certain that this kind of thing would warp a family out of any recognizable shape. I'm not certain that all of them would end up in a film noir, but what do I know. I wasn't in the mood to give it a bad rating. The good parts were really, really good.

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson. Synopsis from Goodreads: Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once. I'm not trying to be dramatic, but it is the truth. Some of us are good, others are bad, and some just unfortunate. I'm Ernest Cunningham. Call me Ern or Ernie. I wish I'd killed whoever decided our family reunion should be at a ski resort, but it's a little more complicated than that. Have I killed someone? Yes. I have. Who was it? Let's get started.

-”If the foyer had the lingering smell of damp expected of a ski lodge, the Drying Room had that of a shipwreck. The room was for people to peel off their sweaty, wet snow gear and dump it overnight to pick up, semi-dried, in the morning, so it was airtight to keep the heat and the smell 

from escaping: the rubber-lined door had opened with a phuck as the seal broke. I needed gills to breathe the dank, thick air. I could almost feel the mold spores in my nose. To say it smelled like feet would be a disservice to feet.”

When you read a lot of mysteries, anything that sets one apart is welcome. That device, plus the breaking of the fourth wall (or whatever it's called in books), plus the sometimes cockeyed humour, did make me wonder if this was too light for my traditionally bitter, twisted sensibilities. In the end I was a fan. I see that Stevenson's second book features the same main character and is called Everyone on This Train is a Suspect, and I'm kind of tickled that he's sticking to the gig, although it doesn't have exactly the same effect. 

The Last Word by Taylor Adams. Synopsis from Goodreads: After posting a negative book review, a woman living in a remote location begins to wonder if the author is a little touchy—or very, very dangerous—in this pulse-pounding novel of psychological suspense and terror from the critically acclaimed author of No Exit and Hairpin Bridge.  Emma Carpenter lives in isolation with her golden retriever Laika, house-sitting an old beachfront home on the rainy Washington coast. Her only human contact is her enigmatic old neighbor, Deek, and (via text) the house’s owner, Jules. One day, she reads a poorly written—but gruesome—horror novel by the author H. G. Kane, and posts a one-star review that drags her into an online argument with none other than the author himself. Soon after, disturbing incidents start to occur at night. To Emma, this can’t just be a coincidence. It was strange enough for this author to bicker with her online about a lousy review; could he be stalking her, too?

Like I said - I have over 700 books on my mystery/thriller shelf - at this point it's quite something to find one that is even a little bit different. This one? Was a little bit different. I don't want to give anything away, so I'll leave it at that.

I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai. Synopsis from Goodreads: A successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past—the family tragedy that marred her adolescence, her four largely miserable years at a New Hampshire boarding school, and the murder of her former roommate, Thalia Keith, in the spring of their senior year. Though the circumstances surrounding Thalia's death and the conviction of the school's athletic trainer, Omar Evans, are hotly debated online, Bodie prefers—needs—to let sleeping dogs lie. But when the Granby School invites her back to teach a course, Bodie is inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent flaws. In their rush to convict Omar, did the school and the police overlook other suspects? Is the real killer still out there? As she falls down the very rabbit hole she was so determined to avoid, Bodie begins to wonder if she wasn't as much of an outsider at Granby as she'd thought—if, perhaps, back in 1995, she kn ew something that might have held the key to solving the case.

-”Do you remember Peewee Walcott and Dorian Culler and Mike Stiles? Don’t worry about it. They were the foundational souls of my adolescence, but to you they were faces passing through. You’ve had a new crop every year since. Thalia meant enough to you that I’m sure you remember the kids right around her – Robbie Serenho, Rachel, Beth – the ones who orbited her like moons.

On-screen, a house fell around Buster Keaton, and he stood there unharmed – bewildered, blessed.”

-”The story was on MSNBC, too. The one where the judge said the swimmer was so promising. The one where the rapist reminded the judge of himself as a young rapist.”

I became aware of this book at the same time as another one that also looked really good. I read the other one and it was disappointing. This one was not. It was both well-written and satisfyingly plotted, although people who need a crystal-clear resolution won't be happy (sometimes I am one of them - this time I'm okay with the end). The boarding-school setting was perfect, among other reasons for an ideal setting for displaying several flavours of casual misogyny and rape culture.

I try really hard not to argue with people on their reviews, because everyone is entitled to their opinion and also because usually it does nothing to change their mind. I admit to being baffled by people saying it seems like too late to write another "me too" book. Really? Like Me Too already happened and now it's all over? Isn't that kind of thinking precisely why we might need more Me Too books?
It's a bit of a joke about me that I keep saying I'm going to start listening to podcasts and then I only watch shows or read books about podcasting - but I like them! And I'm a better reader than listener! I really liked the way Bodie was always self-critical and aware of her own possible biases and of affecting the direction of the podcast. Her ambivalence about someone close to her being the subject of certain accusations was also pretty realistic, although it's not surprising that it pissed some readers off.
Basically, sometimes ambivalence in fiction annoys me, but this time it seemed wholly appropriate, and not in any way a cop-out.

The Angel Maker by Alex North. Synopsis from Goodreads: Growing up in a beautiful house in the English countryside, Katie Shaw lived a charmed life. At the cusp of graduation, she had big dreams, a devoted boyfriend, and a little brother she protected fiercely. Until the day a violent stranger changed the fate of her family forever. Years later, still unable to live down the guilt surrounding what happened to her brother, Chris, and now with a child of her own to protect, Katie struggles to separate the real threats from the imagined. Then she gets the phone call: Chris has gone missing and needs his big sister once more. Meanwhile, Detective Laurence Page is facing a particularly gruesome crime. A distinguished professor of fate and free will has been brutally murdered just hours after firing his staff. All the leads point back to two old cases: the gruesome attack on teenager Christopher Shaw, and the despicable crimes of a notorious serial killer who, legend had it, could see the future.

I remember thinking that I would try this one and if it wasn't pretty impressive I was done with the author, because the last two or three had been, not bad, but getting pretty similar. Not gonna lie, I don't remember a lot of details about this one, but I remember it was really good. The musing about free will gave it a bittersweet gravitas I didn't find in the other books. 

Night Will Find You by Julia Heaberlin. Synopsis from Goodreads: A scientist with a special gift riles a wasp's nest of conspiracy theories while investigating a cold case in this riveting novel from the acclaimed and bestselling author of Black-Eyed Susans and We Are All the Same in the Dark. When she was ten, Vivvy Bouchet saved a boy’s life by making an impossible prediction. Ever since, she has been in a life-long battle between the urgent voices in her head and the science she loves. Now a brilliant young astrophysicist, she wants nothing more than to be left alone with the stars in the Big Bend country of Texas. But the boy she saved, now a Fort Worth cop, has always believed she is psychic—even though she won’t say that word out loud. He is begging her to help solve the high-profile cold case of a little girl who disappeared in broad daylight from the kitchen of her old Victorian house. A body was never found, and her mother sits in prison still loudly proclaiming her innocence. Vivvy reluctantly agrees to try. When a popular Texas conspiracy theorist podcaster named Bubba Guns finds out about her involvement, he spews conspiracy theories about the case and muddled truths about Vivvy’s murky past. As his listeners spin dangerously out of control, and with her career and the people she loves on the line, Vivvy decides to fight back.

-"I don't want either of them traveling through the photos I've snapped of strange objects, scrambled notes dictated by whispers, an internet search history that has Google analytics in a tailspin about whether to target me with ads for the antipsychotic Latuda or Jordan Peele horror movies."

-"If my mother gave me a grip on any truth, it's that we are limited in our perceptions. Even hard science says the universe itself does not behave as if we are all in one moment of now. Theoretical physics equations can work backward and forward, and how is that?"

I admire a writer who can make a device like precognition un-cheesy - here it is presented matter-of-factly, sometimes with humour. This read to me like an engaging small-town novel with great characters that incidentally has a mystery and some psychic-ness (sorry, what IS the adjective for psychic?). I found Black-Eyed Susans a little disappointing, and didn't remember that it was by the same author until after I read this, or I probably would not have. 

Last Words (Mark Novak #1) by Michael Koryta. Synopsis from Goodreads: Still mourning the death of his wife, private investigator Mark Novak accepts a case that may be his undoing. On the same day his wife died, the body of a teenage girl was pulled from the extensive and perilous cave system beneath Southern Indiana. Now the man who rescued the girl, who was believed to be her killer, begs Novak to uncover what really happened. Garrison is much like any place in America, proud and fortified against outsiders. For Mark to delve beneath the town's surface, he must match wits with the man who knows the caverns better than anyone. A man who seemed to have lost his mind. A man who seems to know Mark Novak all too well.

-"Understand now? Trapdoor seemed so pure once, seemed so magical. Right up until my father proposed to Diane Martin. And do you know what? Diane was lovely. She was a lovely woman, and her daughter was the same, and I knew that. Even when I went out of my way to hurt her, I knew that. I just wanted to be allowed to be angry about it. He was my father, and he'd left my mother, and I was entitled to my anger, and Sarah didn't get it. But my anger wasn't supposed to last. I understood that even then. The fight would pass, and we'd be fine. We were seventeen. You get another chance then, always."

For the most part I find Michael Koryta a really solid author. His mysteries are often elevated with superior writing and characterization. The ways in which Novak's grief are described, and then the writing about the near-mystic experiences of cave exploration took this book to the next level for me.  

Exiles (Aaron Falk #3) by Jane Harper. Synopsis from Goodreads: At a busy festival site on a warm spring night, a baby lies alone in her pram, her mother vanishing into the crowds. A year on, Kim Gillespie’s absence casts a long shadow as her friends and loved ones gather deep in the heart of South Australian wine country to welcome a new addition to the family. Joining the celebrations is federal investigator Aaron Falk. But as he soaks up life in the lush valley, he begins to suspect this tight-knit group may be more fractured than it seems. Between Falk’s closest friend, a missing mother, and a woman he’s drawn to, dark questions linger as long-ago truths begin to emerge.

-"Falk turned back to Raco and had opened his mouth when the words simply disappeared. It happened without warning as, in a dormant part of his mind, something stirred. Whatever it was shifted, heavy and stubborn, only to resettle awkwardly. It left behind a mild but distinctly uncomfortable sensation, as though Falk had forgotten something he really needed to remember."

Jane Harper is so fucking good. The Australian landscape that's a character in its own right. The exquisitely nuanced characters. The multi-layered, heartwrenching mysteries. There are quite a few storylines running through this, and all of them were worthwhile. It may be the last Aaron Falk book which would make me sad, but her other books have been flawless as well. 

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill. Synopsis from Goodreads:The ornate reading room at the Boston Public Library is quiet, until the tranquility is shattered by a woman's terrified scream. Security guards take charge immediately, instructing everyone inside to stay put until the threat is identified and contained. While they wait for the all-clear, four strangers, who'd happened to sit at the same table, pass the time in conversation and friendships are struck. Each has his or her own reasons for being in the reading room that morning—it just happens that one is a murderer. Award-winning author Sulari Gentill delivers a sharply thrilling read with The Woman in the Library, an unexpectedly twisty literary adventure that examines the complicated nature of friendship and shows us that words can be the most treacherous weapons of all.

Obviously I'm always up for a mystery involving a library. Fairly simple, but not in a negative way. The gentle satire surrounding writing awards and the description of Winifred's writing process are a perfect foil for the actual mystery encountered by the newly-formed group of friends.  The epistolary sections add yet another dimension. It was great fun - I stayed up way too late reading until the end. 

This Poison Will Remain (Commissaire Adamsberg #11) by Fred Vargas, Sian Reynolds (trans). Synopsis from Goodreads: Commissaire Adamsberg investigates the death of three men linked by their childhood at an orphanage in Nimes, all killed by the venom of the recluse spider, in the new novel by the #1 bestselling French crime writer. A murder in Paris brings Commissaire Adamsberg out of the Icelandic mists of his previous investigation and unexpectedly into the region of Nîmes, where three old men have died of spider bites. The recluse has a sneaky attack, but is that enough to explain the deaths of these men, all killed by the same venom? At the National Museum of Natural History, Adamsberg meets a pensioner who tells him that two of the three octogenarians have known each other since childhood, when they lived in a local orphanage called The Mercy. There, they had belonged to a small group of violent young boys known as the "band of recluses." Adamsberg faces two obstacles: the third man killed by the same venom was not part of the "band of recluses," and the amount of spider venom necessary to kill doesn't add up.

Let me be very clear. You may hate this book. I myself have often complained about mysteries where the detective seems, not just perceptive, but nearly psychic. I have more and more trouble reading about kindly, intelligent, thoughtful police detectives. And even within this series, this book doesn't just strain the bonds of credulity  - it stretches the bonds of credulity from earth to outer space, all the way around the moon and they might actually be one of the rings of Saturn. The whole squad ends up working one case, that is not even a case they're officially supposed to be working. Plus there are some birds in the courtyard that.... no, I've said too much. Start at the beginning of the series and if you like it, by the time you get to this one you will be ready. Oh, in case I wasn't clear, I loved it. Every stupid, implausible word. Somehow it's less hard to believe when it's French.