8 minute read
THE MAN WHO DIED TWICE by Richard Osman
and Lydia’s friend Hugh Gaveston, who funds his interests in magazine collecting and taxidermy from his late parents’ estate. When the new footman finds Campbell-Scott shot to death early Christmas morning and the local constable, whose only talents are for obfuscation and malapropism, pronounces the death a suicide despite some obviously dodgy footprints in the snow around the corpse, Hugh decides to launch his own investigation. In the process, characters are not so much developed as denuded of their self-protective layers until the climactic secret is revealed. The presentation throughout is insufferably arch, as when debut novelist Moncrieff invokes a hypothetical observer: “not for our spectator the uncouth sport of loitering to steal any conversational crumbs.” Fans of the period will be left yearning for Moncrieff’s golden-age models—Christie, Margery Allingham, Dorothy L. Sayers—whose smarter plotting and dialogue come off as far more effortless.
As Lord Westbury wearily reflects: “There was really no escaping it: this Christmas was a catastrophe.” Amen.
THE MAN WHO DIED TWICE
Osman, Richard Pamela Dorman/Viking (368 pp.) $26.00 | Sep. 28, 2021 978-1-98-488099-4
Osman follows The Thursday Murder Club (2020), his supremely entertaining debut, with an even better second installment. Coopers Chase, an upscale retirement village in the British countryside, is home to the Thursday Murder Club, which consists of shrewd, deadly former spy Elizabeth Best, retired nurse Joyce Meadowcroft, psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif, political activist Ron Ritchie, and three honorary members, fixer Bogdan Jankowski, DCI Chris Hudson, and Police Constable Donna De Freitas. A letter from a dead man plunges Elizabeth and her friends into a dangerous case involving local crooks, the Mafia, and MI6. The letter is signed by Marcus Carmichael, whose corpse Elizabeth had seen pulled from the Thames years earlier, but it turns out to have been written by Elizabeth’s ex-husband, Douglas Middlemiss, who knew that name would get her attention. Douglas isn’t dead, but he’s still in a spot of trouble involving stolen diamonds and an angry go-between who holds valuable items for a variety of crooks. When a group of teenagers steal Ibrahim’s phone and then kick him in the head after he falls down, the group plots revenge, little knowing that the two problems may soon become one. When Douglas and his handler, Poppy, are shot dead, the group must race MI6 and several vicious crooks to neutralize a number of killers and find the diamonds. Elizabeth, who knows so much about Douglas, is assigned to decode the clues he left behind, but each of her seemingly innocuous friends has skills that enhance the group’s ability to survive and place blame where it belongs while covering up a myriad of minor offenses.
A clever, funny mystery peopled with captivating characters that enhance the story at every quirky turn.
MURDER AT THE ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS
Penrose, Andrea Kensington (304 pp.) $26.00 | Sep. 28, 2021 978-1-4967-3250-7
The fast-approaching nuptials of a couple with many secrets are threatened with delay by yet another murder in Penrose’s latest Regency mystery. Although Lady Charlotte Sloane’s relationship with the Earl of Wrexford has been fraught with problems, they’re finally preparing to marry when a well-known scientist dies at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew. Wrexford is called to the scene by Dr. Hosack, an American friend of the deceased who suspects that it was poison and not a weak heart that killed Mr. Becton, who was about to announce a great advance in anti-malarial medicines. One of Charlotte’s wards witnessed the killer’s departure, but his inability to identify him leaves the witness in possible danger. After the sleuthing pair discover that one of their most vicious enemies may be involved, they decide to investigate despite the bad timing. Becton had planned to offer his cure for free, but others are eager to steal the formula and sample in order to turn a profit. Luckily, many friends who have helped the couple in past cases are willing to pitch in again to investigate a complicated puzzle that features more than one group of villains. The fact that Great Britain and the United States are on the brink of war drags politics into the mix as well.
A bit of Regency-period romance and history enhance a convoluted mystery with plenty of derring-do.
MANGO, MAMBO, AND MURDER
Reyes, Raquel V. Crooked Lane (336 pp.) $26.99 | Oct. 12, 2021 978-1-64385-784-8
A food anthropologist discovers that even a bland repast can be deadly. Miriam Quiñones-Smith finds herself at loose ends when she leaves her job teaching about Caribbean food culture in New York to relocate with her husband to Miami. Although she grew up in nearby Hialeah, snobby, sterile Coral Shores is nothing like the bustling Cuban enclave of her youth. Aside from her mother-in-law, Marjory, who misses no opportunity to put Miriam down for speaking to her son in Spanish, her only contact in her new home is her old schoolmate Alma Diaz, a busy realtor who focuses on events like the Women’s Club luncheon, where she can network with prospective clients. Miriam finds Alma’s lunch mates as unappealing as the food. They seem unmoved even when Sunny Weatherman keels over dead at their table without finishing her chicken salad. Suddenly
a perfect bind
Miriam faces three demands on her time. First, she’s tapped for a series of guest appearances on UnMundo’s cooking show, La Tacita. Second, she needs to find out why her husband, Robert, has become distant and evasive, coming home late enough to miss her spectacular sancocho stew. And third, she needs to investigate Sunny’s death, especially once the police focus increasingly on Alma as their main suspect. Miriam is intrepid, sticking to her investigation as closely as she sticks to her plan to keep her son bilingual.
Reyes’ no-nonsense heroine livens up a mediocre mystery.
WOLF POINT
Smith, Ian K. Thomas & Mercer (348 pp.) $24.95 | Oct. 5, 2021 978-1-5420-2786-1
A slick Chicago private eye probes the city’s sleazy political scene to uncover the truth surrounding a suspicious suicide. It takes a lot to get smooth shamus Ashe Cayne off the golf course, but the intriguing case of Walter Griffin fills the bill. Two years after the death of the influential populist politician was ruled a suicide, unkind gossip still swirls around the event. Griffin’s widow, Viola, is convinced that someone in the mayor’s office “ordered the hit,” and his children, Katrina and Walter Jr., press Cayne to investigate. Suspicions that “the Russians” were behind his death prompt Cayne’s trip to the Ukrainian Village on the Near West Side. While she adored her husband and admired his hardscrabble rise from poor beginnings, Viola also knows he may have been involved in something less than legal. Cayne’s second case unfolds like a traditional whodunit, with a series of colorful suspects interviewed before the laid-back Cayne begins to put the pieces together with the help of Mechanic, his rugged sidekick. The supporting cast ranges all the way from police commander Rory Burke, retired alderman Delroy Thomas, and teachers union chief Shawna Simpson to shady car wash owner Cephus Redmond, thuggish Antoine Nelson, his flashy girlfriend Brittany Farrington, and prolific petty criminal Pernell Watson. Smith’s love of Chicago is palpable in his rich depictions of its diversity, vitality, and unique pockets. (He also displays a rare talent for variegated character names.) The discovery of pampered mistress Sophia Caballé and her connection with mayoral aide Amy Donnegan gives traction to the investigation.
A brisk and twisty whodunit with a motley cast that includes the city of big shoulders.
A PERFECT BIND
St. James, Dorothy Berkley (304 pp.) $26.00 | Sep. 28, 2021 978-0-593-09860-8
A librarian’s guilty secret is imperiled when murder stalks the library. Upon learning that the town library in Cypress, South Carolina, will be turned into a high-tech center with no physical books, Trudell Becket and a band of like-minded friends manage to save many of the discarded books from the dump and open a library in the basement that they keep hidden from stern library director Lida Farnsworth. When heavy drinker Owen Maynard is found murdered in his truck behind the library, Tru, who’s already solved one murder, and her besties, Tori and Flossie, decide to use the knowledge they gained from all those years of reading mysteries to solve the case before the authorities stumble on the secret library. Tru also has another, perhaps unrelated, problem with someone getting into the room at night and tossing books around. Meanwhile, police detective Jace Bailey, who broke Tru’s heart in high school, keeps asking her out. Unable to believe that he’s really attracted to her, she puts him off despite the gossip that has them practically engaged and Tru pregnant. Delving into gossip and town history reveals that there used to be a speak-easy in the library, and Tru wonders if that’s what the intruder is searching for. But there are plenty of suspects who might have killed Maynard, who’s rumored to have stolen money from a local church and cheated his garage clients by overcharging.
It’s not easy to guess the killer in this amusing cozy filled with romantic angst and peculiar characters.
IN THE COMPANY OF WITCHES
Wallace, Auralee Berkley (336 pp.) $7.99 paper | Oct. 5, 2021 978-0-593335-83-3
Everyone in the New England town of Evenfall knows there’s something odd about the Warren family, but few suspect that they’re witches. Brynn Warren and her aunts, Nora and Izzy, plus uncle Gideon, who lives in the attic, are good witches who have used their powers for the welfare of the townspeople for 400 years. The only guest currently staying in the home they run as a B&B is Constance Graves, who’s paying for all the rooms and acting in a way that justifies every penny. Everyone knows Constance’s reputation for being demanding, but this time she’s outdoing herself, driving Nora to start using spells to get some peace. When Constance is found dead, the police decide that her decease was no accident, making the Warrens, especially Nora, prime suspects.
