Books Read in 2024: Three-Star Mystery/Thriller

I've discovered something cool good sort of. I used to think a 'rest day' or 'day off', when I was feeling run down or burned out, meant resting, reading, and generally avoiding anything one would term 'exercise'. This does not seem to be the case anymore. I feel like I might be getting sick, so I went to bed early, woke up at four a.m. and read for a couple of hours, slept a few more hours and then got up and went for a walk and did some yoga. I am still nowhere near where I'd like to be in my exercise goals, but if I don't do some kind of intentional movement in a day, I feel a bit edgy. I fear hope think I might have done the same thing that I did with flossing my teeth - tricked myself into a habit that I now feel vexed if I don't fulfill. 

Three-Star Mystery/Thriller

YA

Midnight on Beacon Street by Emily Ruth Verona: Synopsis from Goodreads: October 1993. One night. One house. One dead body. When single mom Eleanor Mazinski goes out a for a much-needed date night, she leaves her two young children —sweet, innocent six-year-old Ben and precocious, defiant twelve-year-old Mira— in the capable hands of their sitter, Amy. The quiet seventeen-year-old is good at looking after children, despite her anxiety disorder. She also loves movies, especially horror flicks. Amy likes their predictability; it calms the panic that threatens to overwhelm her.

The evening starts out normally enough, with games, pizza, and dancing. But as darkness falls, events in this quaint suburban New Jersey house take a terrifying turn —unexpected visitors at the door, mysterious phone calls, and by midnight, little Ben is in the kitchen standing in a pool of blood, with a dead body at his feet.

In this dazzling debut novel, Emily Ruth Verona moves back and forth in time, ratcheting up suspense and tension on every page. Chock-full of nods to classic horror films of the seventies and eighties, Midnight on Beacon Street is a gripping thriller full of electrifying twists and a heartwarming tale of fear and devotion that explores our terrors and the lengths we’ll go to keep our loved ones safe.

-”The kitchen’s all dark except for some loose light reflecting off the refrigerator and the knife’s handle. Michael is standing there in his mask all still and patient, and he just tilts his head ever so slightly. Like there’s something in this death he’s trying to find. Amy considers this to be creepier than any of the actual kills or big scares. Because it is so human. And it is so subtle. And maybe, in its own perverted way, it’s just a tiny bit beautiful. The only other shot that even compares is that final look Anthony Perkins gives the camera in Psycho, or maybe the blood pouring through the elevator doors in The Shining. Just the right implementation of craft and chaos.”

Three and a half. It wasn't quite what I was expecting, but for what it was it was well-done. I will always give an 'anxious girl who loves horror movies' book a whirl (is my husband perhaps out of town and am I by chance watching a bunch of movies that will make it impossible for me to sleep tonight? I plead the fifth.) A lot of this could have been lifted from my teen-aged life (minus the dead body). It's just that I've read a lot of this type of book now, so they need to level up to make an impression.

Adult

No One Can Know by Kate Alice Marshall: Synopsis from Goodreads: Fourteen years ago, the Palmer sisters―Emma, Juliette, and Daphne―left their home in Arden Hills and never returned. But when Emma discovers she’s pregnant and her husband loses his job, she has no option but to return to the house that she and her estranged sisters still own . . . and where their parents were murdered.

Emma has never told anyone what she saw the night her parents died, even when she became the prime suspect. But her presence in the house threatens to uncover secrets that have stayed hidden for years, and the sisters are drawn together once again. As they face their memories of the past, rivalries restart, connections are forged, and, for the first time, Emma starts to ask questions about what really happened that night.
The more Emma learns, the more riddles emerge. And Emma begins to wonder just what her siblings will do to keep the past buried, and whether she did the right thing staying quiet about what was whispered that night: “No one can know.”

I gave this three stars because I kind of hated it, but I was pretty sure I was hating it unfairly, partly because I'd been sick for over two weeks and I was saving this for a time when I needed a great read, and partly because of the author's previous books. Do you ever read an amazing book and think that maybe you should just never read that author again? Because sure, they might keep producing amazing books (and to be clear, I understand that part of the magic is my mood at the time and the way I received the book), or you might find every forthcoming book disappointing merely because of the amazing book?
There are authors where doing this would have been a mistake, but also authors where I wish I had stopped with The Book.
This wasn't bad, or poorly written. It was a serviceable mystery and a pretty dead-on portrait of what three sisters coming from this kind of environment would be like. But that's all it was, an okay mystery with some pretty boring romance, and some tropes that I am kind of over (again, not the author's fault, because again, I've read a lot of mystery/thrillers and there needs to be something special at this point to make one memorable, which is a conundrum because you can't tell if that something special is there until you read the book.
The book I loved was Rules for Vanishing, and I will probably stick to Marshall's YA fiction from now on and avoid her adult thrillers (did I sell that at all?) Which is fine. Oh, and also I still stayed up until 4 a.m. reading this, partly because I had a nap after work and couldn't sleep, but still. It couldn't have been that bad. Or maybe it was, since one of the other Goodreads reviews said "no one can know, not even the reader when they finish the book..."

The Girl Who Was Taken by Charlie Donlea: Synopsis from Goodreads: Two abducted girls—one who returns, one who doesn’t. The night they go missing, high school seniors Nicole Cutty and Megan McDonald are at a beach party in their small town of Emerson Bay, North Carolina. Police launch a massive search, but hope is almost lost—until Megan escapes from a bunker deep in the woods. . . . A year later, the bestselling account of her ordeal has made Megan a celebrity. It’s a triumphant story, except for one inconvenient Nicole is still missing. 

Nicole’s older sister, Livia, a fellow in forensic pathology, expects that one day soon Nicole’s body will be found and her sister’s fate determined. Instead, the first clue comes from another body—that of a young man connected to Nicole’s past. Livia reaches out to Megan to learn more about that fateful night. Other girls have disappeared, and she’s increasingly sure the cases are connected. Megan knows more than she revealed in her book. Flashes of memory are pointing to something more monstrous than she described. And the deeper she and Livia dig, the more they realize that sometimes true terror lies in finding exactly what you’ve been looking for . . 

-”’The African Serengeti?’

‘That’s the one. You know how life works there?’

Livis shook her head.

‘Each morning when the sun comes up, cresting the horizon and stretching shadows across the sand, every gazelle and every lion opens their eyes. They all understand something. Every gazelle wakes knowing that to survive the day they gotta run faster than the slowest gazelle in the herd. And every lion wakes knowing that to survive the day, they gotta run faster than the fastest lion in the pack. That’s life, young lady.’

Livia stared at him. ‘So the fastest lion gets the slowest gazelle? That’s the point?’

‘No.’ Randy stood and headed for the showers. ‘The point is that no matter who you are, you gotta wake up runnin’.”

Really not bad. Perfectly serviceable.

Dead of Winter by Darcy Coates: Synopsis from Goodreads: From bestselling author Darcy Coates comes Dead of Winter, a remote cabin in the snowy wilderness thriller that will teach you to trust no one. There are eight strangers. One killer. Nowhere left to run. When Christa joins a tour group heading deep into the snowy expanse of the Rocky Mountains, she's hopeful this will be her chance to put the ghosts of her past to rest. But when a bitterly cold snowstorm sweeps the region, the small group is forced to take shelter in an abandoned hunting cabin. Despite the uncomfortably claustrophobic quarters and rapidly dropping temperature, Christa believes they'll be safe as they wait out the storm.

She couldn't be more wrong. Deep in the night, their tour guide goes missing...only to be discovered the following morning, his severed head impaled on a tree outside the cabin. Terrified, and completely isolated by the storm, Christa finds herself trapped with eight total strangers. One of them kills for sport...and they're far from finished. As the storm grows more dangerous and the number of survivors dwindles one by one, Christa must decide who she can trust before this frozen mountain becomes her tomb.

I read a haunted house book by this author and was pleasantly surprised by how good it was, considering how prolific the author is. I seldom turn down a scary story set in a snowy location. I did not have the same experience here. It wasn't terrible, just a little clunky, and pretty forgettable. 

How to Solve Your Own Murder (Castle Knoll Files #1) by Kristen Perrin: Synopsis from Goodreads: For fans of Knives Out and The Thursday Murder Club, an enormously fun mystery about a woman who spends her entire life trying to prevent her foretold murder only to be proven right sixty years later, when she is found dead in her sprawling country estate.... Now it's up to her great-niece to catch the killer.
It’s 1965 and teenage Frances Adams is at an English country fair with her two best friends. But Frances’s night takes a hairpin turn when a fortune-teller makes a bone-chilling prediction: One day, Frances will be murdered. Frances spends a lifetime trying to solve a crime that hasn’t happened yet, compiling dirt on every person who crosses her path in an effort to prevent her own demise. For decades, no one takes Frances seriously, until nearly sixty years later, when Frances is found murdered, like she always said she would be.
In the present day, Annie Adams has been summoned to a meeting at the sprawling country estate of her wealthy and reclusive great-aunt Frances. But by the time Annie arrives in the quaint English village of Castle Knoll, Frances is already dead. Annie is determined to catch the killer, but thanks to Frances’s lifelong habit of digging up secrets and lies, it seems every endearing and eccentric villager might just have a motive for her murder. Can Annie safely unravel the dark mystery at the heart of Castle Knoll, or will dredging up the past throw her into the path of a killer?As Annie gets closer to the truth, and closer to the danger, she starts to fear she might inherit her aunt’s fate instead of her fortune.

-”You seem to have a lot of enemies,” I say slowly. (she says everything slowly)

-”’If I decide I need to,’ he says plainly.

‘Frances didn’t kill Emily,’ I say plainly.

-”’...I think the police should look for Saxon,’ I say slowly.”

-”’You think Walt killed Frances,’ I say slowly.”

-”’Maybe it doesn’t,’ Jenny says plainly.”

I try not to second-guess my reviews months later, but as soon as I saw this title I got angry all over again. The premise sounded so cool and the cover was so amazing (I know, I know, I JUDGED), and then the actual reading experiences was -- *sound of balloon deflating*. Everyone says things either slowly or plainly (seriously, I started counting). The pretentiously world-weary and disaffected rich guy wooing Frances by talking about how bad he would be for her is such a tiresome trope I felt like rolling my eyes at every scene he was featured in. Annie is a twit - at one point the cop gives her one night to finish with a diary before she turns it over to him and she 'made so many notes and spent so much time rereading old entries that I didn't get to the end of the diary' - maybe not the stupidest thing I've ever read in a murder mystery, but has to be up there. 

Home is Where the Bodies Are by Jeneva Rose: Synopsis from Goodreads: After their mother passes, three estranged siblings reunite to sort out her estate. Beth, the oldest, never left home. She stayed with her mom, caring for her until the very end. Nicole, the middle child, has been kept at arm’s length due to her ongoing battle with a serious drug addiction. Michael, the youngest, lives out of state and hasn’t been back to their small Wisconsin town since their father ran out on them seven years before. While going through their parent’s belongings, the siblings stumble upon a collection of home videos and decide to revisit those happier memories. However, the nostalgia is cut short when one of the VHS tapes reveals a night back in 1999 that none of them have any recollection of. On screen, their father appears covered in blood. What follows is a dead body and a pact between their parents to get rid of it, before the video abruptly ends.

Exceptionally mid.

Middle of the Night by Riley Sager: Synopsis from Goodreads: The worst thing to ever happen on Hemlock Circle occurred in Ethan Marsh’s backyard. One July night, ten-year-old Ethan and his best friend and neighbor, Billy, fell asleep in a tent set up on a manicured lawn in a quiet, quaint New Jersey cul de sac. In the morning, Ethan woke up alone. During the night, someone had sliced the tent open with a knife and taken Billy. He was never seen again.

Thirty years later, Ethan has reluctantly returned to his childhood home. Plagued by bad dreams and insomnia, he begins to notice strange things happening in the middle of the night. Someone seems to be roaming the cul de sac at odd hours, and signs of Billy’s presence keep appearing in Ethan’s backyard. Is someone playing a cruel prank? Or has Billy, long thought to be dead, somehow returned to Hemlock Circle?
The mysterious occurrences prompt Ethan to investigate what really happened that night, a quest that reunites him with former friends and neighbors and leads him into the woods that surround Hemlock Circle. Woods where Billy claimed monsters roamed and where a mysterious institute does clandestine research on a crumbling estate.The closer Ethan gets to the truth, the more he realizes that no place—be it quiet forest or suburban street—is completely safe. And that the past has a way of haunting the present.

-”After his brother died, Russ thought the house would feel bigger. There was, after all, one fewer person inside, ceding more space to the others. Instead, the whole place seemed to shrink. The ceilings felt lower, the walls closer together. Russ found himself ducking when he passed through doorways, even though there was no need.”

Not my favourite of this author's. Not bad by any means, but sort of felt like it was trying to be two things and as a result ended up being less than completely satisfying as either a thriller or a meditation on loss (for me personally - I can see it working quite well for others).  Good enough for a quick read on a sniffly Sunday.

The Only One Left by Riley Sager: Synopsis from Goodreads: At seventeen, Lenora Hope
Hung her sister with a rope
Now reduced to a schoolyard chant, the Hope family murders shocked the Maine coast one bloody night in 1929. While most people assume seventeen-year-old Lenora was responsible, the police were never able to prove it. Other than her denial after the killings, she has never spoken publicly about that night, nor has she set foot outside Hope’s End, the cliffside mansion where the massacre occurred.
Stabbed her father with a knife
Took her mother’s happy life
It’s now 1983, and home-health aide Kit McDeere arrives at a decaying Hope’s End to care for Lenora after her previous nurse fled in the middle of the night. In her seventies and confined to a wheelchair, Lenora was rendered mute by a series of strokes and can only communicate with Kit by tapping out sentences on an old typewriter. One night, Lenora uses it to make a tantalizing offer—I want to tell you everything.
“It wasn’t me,” Lenora said
But she’s the only one not dead As Kit helps Lenora write about the events leading to the Hope family massacre, it becomes clear there’s more to the tale than people know. But when new details about her predecessor’s departure come to light, Kit starts to suspect Lenora might not be telling the complete truth—and that the seemingly harmless woman in her care could be far more dangerous than she first thought.

It was fine, janky rip-off Lizzie Borden rhyme aside. I'm always up for a good dual-timeline yarn and a creepy old house. It stretched the bonds of credulity even more than usual that no one would have found any of this out in intervening fifty-odd years. 

The Bookman's Tale by Charlie Lovett: Synopsis from Goodreads: "What about the most valuable relic in the history of English literature—would that be worth killing for?"
Hay-on-Wye, 1995. Peter Byerly isn't sure what drew him into this particular bookshop. Nine months earlier, the death of his beloved wife, Amanda, had left him shattered. The young antiquarian bookseller relocated from North Carolina to the English countryside, hoping to rediscover the joy he once took in collecting and restoring rare books. But upon opening an eighteenth-century study of Shakespeare forgeries, Peter is shocked when a portrait of Amanda tumbles out of its pages. Of course, it isn't really her. The watercolor is clearly Victorian. Yet the resemblance is uncanny, and Peter becomes obsessed with learning the picture's origins.
As he follows the trail back first to the Victorian era and then to Shakespeare's time, Peter communes with Amanda's spirit, learns the truth about his own past, and discovers a book that might definitively prove Shakespeare was, indeed, the author of all his plays.

Three and a half, because I did enjoy reading it even though I'm a bit confused as to why one of the big 'reveals' was supposed to be in any way surprising. The Shakespearean-era passages were fun, and the descriptions of the vagaries of the antiquarian book business were fascinating. I only ended up reading this because I was searching for the term 'bookman' in Libby for another book, and sometimes I like to read books that I come across accidentally this way. As you might imagine, this has varied degrees of success.