m ys t e r y ANTIQUES CARRY ON
Allan, Barbara Severn House (208 pp.) $28.99 | Jul. 6, 2021 978-0-7278-9081-8
An Iowa mother and daughter who sell antiques and solve mysteries fly off to England and into another case of murder. Vivian Borne has relinquished her job as sheriff but not her right, at least in her own eyes, to investigate crime. Her long-suffering daughter, Brandy, often has a different take on crime-solving. So does Brandy’s fiance, Tony, the police chief in Serenity, Iowa. On a trip to England to meet the new publisher of their true-crime books, they visit a Charing Cross Road antiques shop to do a favor for fellow Serenity dealer Skylar James, who’d sold a necklace to Mr. Wescott, the owner. Since neither party wanted to pay shipping and duty, Vivian bought the necklace from Skylar and agreed to bring it to Wescott and
sell it to him for the same price. At the last minute, though, Vivian decides to keep the necklace since she’s been wearing it and raking in the compliments. Regardless, she agrees to come back to pick up a collectible Agatha Christie novel Wescott wants to send to Skylar as a gift. On their second trip to Wescott’s, Vivian and Brandy find the door open and the dealer stabbed with a letter opener Brandy had handled earlier, earning them a trip to jail. Set free, they return home determined to investigate Skylar’s involvement as well as the accidental death of a woman whose will left her daughter and son-in-law rich. In their typical fashion, they stumble from clue to clue, raising Tony’s blood pressure, and discover another murder that plunges them into a dangerous situation from which Brandy’s dog, Sushi, must rescue them. Although there’s a sameness to Allan’s long string of comic mysteries, they always entertain.
AUNTIE POLDI AND THE LOST MADONNA
Giordano, Mario Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (352 pp.) $15.99 paper | May 18, 2021 978-0-358-44627-9
y o u n g a d u lt
reminiscent of his supernatural Miriam Black novels, injected with a juicy dose of Stephen King–like energy. An eerie opening introduces Edmund Walker Reese, a serial killer strapped into Pennsylvania’s electric chair circa 1990 for murdering four girls—a killer who disappears the second the switch is flipped. In the present day, former Philly cop Nate Graves is stewing over the death of his abusive father, who’s left him a home in the woods. Maddie, Nate’s artist wife, thinks it’s perfect for her work, not to mention a natural refuge for their hypersensitive son, Oliver, who’s imbued with not only a preternatural empathy for others, but also a gift for lending the pained some solace. At Nate’s new job as a Fish and Game officer, his partner, Axel Figeroa, always has one eye open for trouble because of their proximity to Ramble Rocks, where Reese committed his dirty deeds, as does the Graves’ neighbor Jed Homackie, a whiskeydrinking peacenik with secrets of his own. As happens, things get weird. Nate starts seeing his dead father around every corner. Maddie experiences fugue states that aren’t simpatico with her newfound predilection for chainsaw sculpture. Oliver gets the worst of it, finding himself caught between a couple of vicious bullies and a newfound frenemy, Jake, who quickly emerges as someone—or something—far darker than he appears. The characters are eccentric and likable even if their plight isn’t quite unpredictable, and the book will be catnip to horror fans, complete with meddling kids, doppelgangers, dimensional fissures, demons, and ghosts; it’s a prototypical edge-of-your-seat plunge into real terror. A grade-A, weirdly comforting, and familiar stew of domestic drama, slasher horror, and primeval evil.
Poldi proves again that although killing herself may not be the best idea, seaside Sicily is a great place to not do it. Auntie Poldi’s plan to drink herself to death in sight of the sea having been foiled multiple times by her involvement in a series of juicy murder investigations, her nameless nephew thinks it may be safe to go off to Paris to join Valérie, the object of his sometimes-requited affections. When he returns in a funk because his would-be beloved is now back with her photographer ex-boyfriend, he finds everything topsy-turvy in Poldi’s home in the Via Baronessa. Vito Montana, the virile policeman who occupies Poldi’s ever lustful thoughts, is nowhere to be found. Instead, a sitar player named Ravi wanders the hallways mixing cleansing smoothies, and Poldi herself seems caught on the great wheel of karma. A tape surfaces that shows an Italian woman with Poldi’s voice cursing in Bavarian at the priests who are trying to exorcise her demons. Then a young nun who’d attended the exorcism falls from a roof in the Vatican. When she sneaks into the Vatican to figure out what’s happening, she manages to knock over a group of cardinals and get herself arrested. Her best friends back home in Torre Archirafi abandon her. The search for a missing statue of the Black Madonna beckons, but an authority even more powerful than the pope puts sex, drink, and sleuthing out of her reach. Poldi rebels as only Poldi can, and the results spiral to epic and profound heights only a manic genius could have imagined. When a heroine so fearless spars with karma, who can doubt the result?
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kirkus.com
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mystery
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15 may 2021
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39
