The Globe and Mail
Death at the Sign of the Rook, Kate Atkinson (Doubleday, 304 pages) and The Dark Wives, Ann Cleeves (Minotaur, 384 pages) Two of Britain’s finest authors bring back two stellar characters in this pair of irresistible novels. Atkinson, whose star gets brighter with every novel she writes, brings back Jackson Brodie, Yorkshire PI, in a brilliant tale of art and murder.
The plot, as tight as a snare drum, has Brodie bored and searching for some stolen paintings when he’s diverted by the realization that there are many stolen art objects, and the clues lead to Burton Makepeace, a crumbling grand estate that survives by hosting murder-mystery weekends. To say more is to give away one of the best plot lines ever. You won’t stop reading until the last word.
Follow that perfect book with Ann Cleeves’s latest in the Vera Stanhope saga. It’s been 10 books and every time I open a new Vera novel I think this is when the series will dwindle. But Cleeves is no ordinary author and this 11th novel is one of her best. A dog walker finds a body. The dead man is a staff member of a local care home for troubled teens. A 14-year-old resident of the home is missing. Could a child commit murder? Vera doesn’t want to think so but clues are clues and she is nothing if not dogged.
Cleeves brings back Vera’s usual crew and introduces a newbie, Rosie, and, as always, the stunning Northumbrian countryside plays a part in the search for a killer. Again, I couldn’t stop reading to the last page, so these two books would be a fine way to spend a fall weekend.
House of Glass, Sarah Pekkanen (St. Martin’s, 352 pages) Please don’t confuse this superb novel with the equally readable Glass House reviewed later. This is Pekkanen’s 13th book and it’s definitely one of her best. Pekkanen’s forte is the world of the elite and this story is set in Washington and its luxurious suburbs.
Stella Hudson is a lawyer specializing as a counsel for children in divorce cases. Her rule is to never take a client under the age of 13 but the case on her desk is special. Her mentor, an esteemed judge, has asked for her and the child is in the midst of a vicious divorce. Her father had an affair with her nanny, who was pregnant and now is dead after falling out of a second-storey window at the family mansion.
We open with Stella on the street awaiting her new client and she silently observes the child bending to tie a shoelace but instead picking up and hiding a sharp piece of glass. When Stella arrives at the family home she finds all the glass in the house has been removed or replaced with plexiglass. There is obviously far more to this case and if she is to protect the interests of the child, it’s possible she may be defending a murderer. It’s a marvelous plot with a twist you will not see coming.
Only One Survives, Hannah Mary McKinnon (Mirabooks, 400 pages) If McKinnon isn’t already on your must-read list, this book will put her there. From the first page to the last, this novel is brilliantly plotted and filled with dynamic characters with a fascinating insider-peek at the music industry.
Vienna Taylor grew up poor and abused without much hope for the future. Her dream was to make music, to use her drums to transport others to the world she hears and loves. But things seem stacked against her until she hits high school and teams up with guitarist Madison Pierce. Madison has everything Vienna lacks – access, money, confidence – and she can sing. The pair form an all-female rock band and seems destined for stardom when fortune leads them to New York.
Then, just as it all seems to come together, it all falls apart. En route to an event, the band’s van crashes in a blizzard and one member is dead, another badly injured. The survivors find shelter but then, things begin to happen and people mysteriously die. Worse for Vienna, Madison, her closest friend and confidante, the person she trusts with all her secrets, disappears. At the end, only Vienna and one other member are left alive. What happened and why?
This is a mystery laden with all sorts of backstories and insights. The high price of fame, the sadness of abused women, and the reasons they seek out and rely on toxic relationships, all play a part in the suspense of just what happened and why.
Guide Me Home, Attica Locke (Mulholland Books, 320 pages) This is the final book in the wonderful Highway 59 trilogy by Locke and I have to admit that l already miss Texas ranger Darren Mathews, one of the most captivating characters in recent crime writing. Mathews is retired, facing an investigation and life has changed considerably. He’s also facing a country that has changed radically since his youth and, even since his last case. This is America after the election of Donald Trump. A time when truth, something Mathews believes is sacred, is now mutable, open to question and no longer reliable.
In this new world, Mathews’s least favourite person, his mother, comes to him for help. A Black college student has gone missing but her white sorority sisters say she’s not missing at all. Ma Mathews has a problem with truth and reality herself, and Darren is loath to get involved. After all, this may just be another lying scam but a trip to the missing girl’s hometown convinces him there’s evil afoot. Be warned: Trump supporters are not going to like the tone of this book. Lies and corruption start at the top and spread, like molasses, all around.
The Examiner, Janice Hallett (Simon & Schuster, 462 pages) Here’s another fabulous puzzle from Hallett, whose books The Appeal and The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels have created a vogue for novels using everything from social-media comments to legal tomes. What they don’t have are traditional storytellers who provide an overview. The readers have to fill in the blanks for themselves.
This time out, we’re in a university with a course leader whose six graduate students are all highly skilled artists and thinkers. It appears that one or more are in danger, possibly. The course director’s real job is to confer grades on the students but he cannot do so without confronting the strange events of the academic year. So the reader must join him in reviewing the events of the year, the academic works of the students and unravelling the mystery. This being a Hallett novel, there are loads of twists and turns. I tried to follow the clues but I ended up just as bamboozled as anyone else. This one is great fun.
Glass Houses, Madeline Ashby (Tor, 272 pages) I love a good mystery with science-fiction elements. Think of Philip Kerr’s wonderful A Philosophical Investigation or The Grid. That’s the world Toronto writer Ashby evokes in Glass Houses, which is also a terrific locked-room mystery.
The plot line is as old as Agatha Christie. A group of people is stranded on a remote island and rescue is not an option. Then people start dying. But Ashby, a highly accomplished science-fiction author, resets all the old tropes.
The group is part of a high-tech company headed by CEO Sumter. They are on their way to a celebratory holiday when their plane crashes. Where are they? There seems to be no people on this island, only a strange black house. Entry is difficult but then exit is impossible.
The group must bring all their considerable tech skills to the fore, especially their advanced AI algorithms, to survive and escape. This one had me – a Luddite – riveted from the beginning. I didn’t understand any of the science but I loved the whodunit.
Queen Macbeth, Val McDermid (Atlantic Monthly, 144 pages) There’s something about Macbeth that keeps Scottish mystery authors defensive. Twenty-five years ago, Dorothy Dunnett shipped out her 700+ pages of the King’s life, lineage, marriage and death. Now, in this slim and delightful book, we have McDermid’s recreation of Lady Macbeth, not the fiendish female that Shakespeare wrote, but a widowed queen in hiding after the battle that cost her a kingdom and a husband.
She is not, of course, Lady Macbeth, but Gruoch, hiding in the monastery on Iona with her three companion women, a weaver, a seer and a healer. They have been together always and now, again, their world is about to collapse.
McDermid’s considerable talent for reconstructing medieval Scotland in all its tribal viciousness, as well as its beauty and joy, is a real treat. The women are found out and must go on the run and therein lies the plot as they take to the backroads and byways facing danger at every turn. This book is short but not a bit slight and there’s a really interesting twist I definitely didn’t see coming.