The Globe and Mail
Summer’s finally here with the promise of beach days and lazy cottage weekends. It’s the perfect season for crime reads and this summer, publishers have delivered loads of books divinely designed for the getaway.
The Long-Shot Trial, William Deverell (ECW Press, 320 pages) This is the latest in the wonderful Arthur Beauchamp series and it’s superb. If, like me, you’ve wondered just how Beauchamp became a lawyer for the lost, Deverell fills in the backstory. The case, set in 1966, has a young and avid Beauchamp taking on a murder case. The accused young woman claims the dead man raped her and that’s why she shot him. Although he’s young and inexperienced, he knows that all he needs to do to win the case is sow some reasonable doubt.
We go forward to Beauchamp now in his eighties who is filled with the regrets. Regular readers know Beauchamp’s life has been one of wins and losses and Deverell plays on all those as he builds this story in the form of a memoir. Beautifully written and haunting, this is one of Deverell’s best.
Farewell, Amethystine, Walter Mosley (Mulholland Books, 336 pages) It’s 1970 in South Central, and Easy Rawlins is 50 years old. Somehow even after 15 books, Mosley has managed to keep the story as fresh and lively as Easy’s debut in Devil in a Blue Dress. Given Mosley’s output, dozens of books in at least three genres and with multiple series, keeping it fresh is as good as any author gets. But Mosley is no ordinary crime writer and Easy Rawlins is no ordinary character.
This time out, Rawlins has gotten personal and financial success, and the bad old days of segregation are behind him. But we always know that the past has a way of intruding. Amethystine Stoller’s ex-husband has disappeared, and she wants Easy to find him. It looks like a simple case, but Rawlins has hardly opened the file when the past draws him, back to the bad old days in Houston with its war and brutality, and things no one wants to recall. When the ex turns up dead, Stoller’s case move to high profile and danger. One of the best of the Rawlins mysteries and one of Mosley’s best ever.
Books we're reading and loving this week: Globe staffers and readers share their book picks
The Offing, Roz Nay (Viking Canada, 360 pages) Nay hails from the Canadian west coast but she’s lived all over the world and those experiences give her lots of fascinating background to her plots. While her first two received prizes and sales, I’d say this is her best work.
Two young women, each with recent shocks, take a job on a sailing yacht with a doting daddy and daughter. There’s also a handsome young crewman added to the mix. As the yacht heads north and the weather heats up, things start to get strange. At first, it just seems like claustrophobia caused by people on a boat but increasingly, there is something awful and not just a feeling. Nay builds suspense wonderfully and when things explode you won’t be able to put the book down. It made me recall the late great Mary Roberts Rinehart’s The Afterhouse, one of the creepiest books ever.
Pitch Dark, Paul Doiron (Minotaur, 304 pages) I’m completely addicted to this brilliant series set in the Maine woods and featuring game warden Mike Bowditch. Even after a dozen books, I’m still hooked on the investigative powers and clever plotting that keeps Doiron’s books moving.
A man, who was not a local, is lost in the woods and it’s unclear if he’s still alive. The investigation leads Bowditch to a reclusive builder in a remote area and he enlists a legendary female bush pilot to take him there. After discovering that it’s a murder, the hunt is on for a vicious killer heading for the Canadian border. What’s worse is that the fugitive’s survival skills are as good as, if not better than, Bowditch’s own. Can he catch the killer?
If this was an ordinary chase novel, it would still be good, but Doiron isn’t content with garden-variety suspense. This book kept me reading long into the night and cancelling all my plans for the next day.
Clete, James Lee Burke (Atlantic, 336 pages) There may be a better novelist of the American South than Burke, but I seriously doubt it. Burke’s work, over the decades, has incorporated everything from Civil War history to the evils of racism, and the scars of segregation. Through all those books, Cletus Purcel has been at Dave Robichaux’s side. Now, Burke has decided to let Purcel speak and his voice is as sharp and sweet as he is.
The story begins with the vandalism of Purcel’s beloved car. The vandals are a group of thugs with ties to a local drug cartel. Like so many others in the south, Purcel has lost family to drug overdoses and he wants the dealers to pay. Robichaux and Purcel get into investigative mode and the switch in voice is one that fans will adore.
Naturally, the trail leads to larger and more powerful criminal families with connections to Louisiana power brokers. On the side, Purcel is hired to find the ex-husband of Clara Bow and that leads to a string of vicious killings that may end up with him on the list. How all this weaves in together is why Burke is still at the top of his game after 40 years and three dozen books.
One Perfect Couple, Ruth Ware (Simon & Schuster, 384 pages) The current mistress of the English suspense novel has borrowed just a tad from Agatha Christie’s masterful And Then There Were None, to produce a taut thriller that is cleverly plotted and beautifully written. A group of people are on an island for a reality television show and with no way off, a ruthless killer is knocking them off one by one.
Lyla, a scientific researcher, doesn’t want to go but her current project is tanking and her boyfriend Nico, an aspiring actor, sees it as his big chance.
From the beginning, things go wrong. But the real disaster is a tropical storm that wrecks the resort, destroys water and food and cuts the group off from their connections on land, leaving them in survival mode. Will they be rescued or murdered before starvation and dehydration gets them?
The Off Season, Amber Cowie (Simon & Schuster 348 pages) Cowie has a tremendous talent for settings and her books always take us to somewhere creepy and remote with the plot revolving around the place. This is her fifth book and it’s definitely her best. We are in the grand forests of British Columbia – Cowie’s home – and on the great Fraser River. With shades of The Shining, the setting is a down-at-the-heels grand hotel in need of restoration.
Our central character is Jane Duvall, a well-respected documentary filmmaker whose career is currently on hold. Despite her friends’ concerns, she rushes into a relationship and hasty marriage with Dom, a contractor with a daughter, Sienna. For a woman in need of change, marriage and instant family check a lot of boxes. Then there’s Dom’s project: the renovation of a hotel that his former wife began. Jane sees this as a perfect place and time to bond with her new family, but she’s hardly arrived when things begin to shift. The hotel owner is creepy and cold; Dom gets distant, and Sienna is downright nasty.
Mystery In The Title, Ian Ferguson and Will Ferguson (HarperCollins 312 pages) No cottage weekend should be without a smart and witty cozy mystery. And the Ferguson brothers deliver that perfectly in their second book featuring actress Miranda Abbott, a small screen star of the late TV series Pastor Fran Investigates, which has been off the air for some time. Things are looking up when a big movie of the week is shooting in good old Happy Rock, Miranda’s hometown, and who better to star than Miranda herself?
That setting is perfect for all sorts of crazy events and introducing some offbeat characters. This is where the Fergusons really show their style. Miranda’s co-star arrives in town and wastes no time smashing through the window of the Duchess Hotel and ending up dead. Police Chief Ned Buckley, fondly remembered from the Fergusons earlier work, I Only Read Murder, is sort of on the case, as is Miranda’s almost-ex-husband. And there are other assorted denizens of Happy Rock hunting for clues and messing up crime scenes. This is all great fun and, best of all, this book goes perfectly with gin and tonics by the lake, followed by naps.
Lightning Strikes The Silence, Iona Whishaw (Touchwood, 490 pages) Lane Winslow and Inspector Darling are back in King’s Cove, B.C. where crime seems rampant. The 11th book in the series no signs of slowing down and that’s all due to Whishaw’s talents for character and plot.
The story begins, literally, with a bang: an explosion in King’s Cove leads to a young woman who is mute. Is that a result of the bang or something worse?
Meanwhile, in Nelson, B.C., Inspector Darling is up to his ears in a jewellery robbery gone bad. The thieves got away with the loot but the jeweller is dead in his shop. Lane is hunting for the woman’s family and Darling is chasing a killer. Clues lead as far away as Cornwall in England and nearer home to scurrilous businessmen up the Mackenzie River. Then the chase comes closer to home as someone starts following Lane.
As always with Whishaw, there is a well-organized plot but it’s the darling Darlings that keep things moving.
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The Return of Ellie Black, Emiko Jean (Simon & Schuster, 320 pages) Jean, best-known for her young adult novels, excels in this, her first adult novel. It begins with a terrified girl running through the woods and then the suspense never stops.
Ellie Black disappeared from her hometown two years ago. Her parents never gave up hope that she would be found and then, miraculously, Ellie runs back into the world. “I think I’m missing, " she says. That leads her to Detective Chelsey Calhoun, whose sister disappeared 20 years before. Chelsey knows all about the heartbreak, horror and desperation that afflicts those who wait and hope and pray. But the miracle of Ellie doesn’t lead to an arrest or even a lead. It’s clear that dreadful things were done to her, but she says nothing.
Using the few clues she can dredge up, Chelsey digs into the mystery of Ellie’s abduction and reappearance. As Chelsey comes up against one dead end after another, unlocking Ellie is more important than ever. Jean gives up bits of Ellie’s tale and Chelsey’s as the suspense builds. I didn’t see the climax coming; Emiko Jean is an author to watch.
A Man Downstairs, Nicole Lundrigan (Penguin Canada, 416 pages) Be warned: This is a very slow book that builds suspense as it goes along. That’s not a criticism, just a fact. The mystery at the heart of the novel is a classic whodunnit whose story seems simple.
Molly Wynter returns to her hometown to look after her father who has suffered a debilitating stroke. Decades before, she was the witness to the murder of her mother Edie and thanks to her testimony, a boy was convicted of the crime. But was he, in fact, innocent?
Lundrigan whips back and forth in time to build the original crime as well as the current day story and that’s one reason for the slow pace. I liked it very much.
Blood Rubies, Mailan Doquang (Mysterious Press, 306 pages) I like a good international thriller mixed in with my beach reads and this debut fills the bill marvellously. Doguang is a Canadian transplant living in New York who usually writes about medieval French architecture. This book set in modern Bangkok is light years removed as it introduces Rune Sarasin, the most interesting jewel thief since Raffles.
The plot begins with a classic heist: Rune steals a batch of rubies from the Bangkok hotel room of millionaire Charles Lemaire. After she celebrates with her boyfriend, Kit, the teenage sister of Kit, Madee, has disappeared. Rune and Kit follow Madee’s cellphone to a notorious slum and en route Rune loses the pouch of rubies. Soon, she’ll be faced with losing a lot more.
This is a cleverly plotted and convincing novel where the characters are well-developed (Charles Lemaire gets a real star turn) and the setting is brilliant. Doquang is a writer to watch.