SECRET LIVES
de Castrique, Mark Poisoned Pen (288 pp.) $16.99 paper | Oct. 11, 2022 978-1-72825-830-0 Multiple shady characters spring into action when a Secret Service agent is murdered. Jonathan Finch is shot dead just outside the Crystal City apartments in Arlington, Virginia, while in the middle of an apparently felonious exchange involving cash and a satchel. Tenant Jesse Cooper, a student at nearby American University, cradles the dying Jonathan and hears his final words: “Tell Ethel the secret.” When she learns of the shooting, Crystal City landlady Ethel Fiona Crestwater immediately calls Cory Bradshaw, the head of the Secret Service, with the news that he’s lost an agent. One of the chief delights of de Castrique’s loopy crime yarn is that Ethel isn’t the frail, distracted septuagenarian she pretends to be but a whip-smart operator preeminent among the title characters. Det. Frank Mancini of the Arlington Police Department, who knows Ethel well, decides to investigate further with her and Bradshaw while trying to keep Jesse in the dark. Ethel does, however, give Jesse a gun for protection. Trevor Norwood, the man who killed Finch, is meanwhile plotting his own revenge. When FBI Director Rudy Hauser learns the identity of the dead man, he remembers him as “the key to twenty million dollars.” Bradshaw’s visit to Finch’s widow, Susan, muddies the water even further when she speculates that her husband may have committed suicide. An attack on Jesse brings FBI special agent Lisa Draper, yet another secretive soul, into the mix to begin her own investigation. De Castrique’s ubertwisty narrative strains credibility but consistently entertains. A taut and crisply told thriller whose charmingly shady protagonist triumphs over a labyrinthine plot.
THE FAMILY IZQUIERDO
Degollado, Rubén Norton (304 pp.) $16.95 paper | Sept. 6, 2022 978-0-393-86682-7
Three generations of Izquierdos tell the story of their family and the misfortunes believed to be caused by a curse. In 1958, Octavio Izquierdo and his wife, Guadalupe, begin building their life in McAllen, Texas. They buy a home and set up a painting and drywall business while dreaming of the good future their children will have—how these things will be their inheritance. But life isn’t always easy for the family. After discovering a goat hoof and a rooster foot buried in the yard, Octavio believes his jealous neighbor, Emiliano Contreras, has put a curse on the family. Ordinary disasters like miscarriages, accidents, and sadness are attributed to it. Years later, in 18
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declining health, Octavio is consumed by his belief in the curse, and he bounces around from nursing home to nursing home because none of the orderlies can keep him calm. His adult children aren’t sure if it really is a curse or a genetic predisposition to anxiety and susto. However, Dina, one of his daughters, refuses to leave her house after having what she believes is a prophetic nightmare showing Emiliano Contreras working with the devil to use grackles to put the evil eye on the Izquierdos. In this gloriously rich epic, we get to see a full picture of the family. Each interlocking chapter is told by a different character, unifying into a thoughtfully crafted history spanning decades. The characters, who are complex and tightly linked to one another, are enlivened by their belief in a mix of superstition, brujería, and Catholicism that feels both familiar and playful. Family celebrations like a Posada, a quinceañera, and the Fourth of July particularly highlight family dynamics. Though most of the stories focus on the Izquierdo family as a whole, there’s one called “La Milagrosa Selena” that is less a story and more a letter to the Diocese of Brownsville that advocates canonizing the queen of Tejano music, Selena Quintanilla-Pérez; it’s a surprising delight. An instant Tejano classic.
THE MAZE
DeMille, Nelson Scribner (464 pp.) $30.00 | Oct. 11, 2022 978-1-5011-0178-6 Book 8 in DeMille’s John Corey series unlocks a complex murder mystery set on Fire Island. The jokes start right away: “You can’t drink all day unless you start in the morning.” Corey is a former NYPD homicide detective, and he’s currently “NYU—New York Unemployed.” He has plenty of enemies, like the Russian SVR intelligence service, which wants him dead—but waiting for that plotline to develop is like waiting for Godot. Ex-lover Det. Beth Penrose conveys an offer that he become a consultant to Security Solutions Investigative Services, “a very tacky private investigative agency” located on Suffolk County farmland with a giant hedge maze as a neighbor. Though Beth doesn’t say so, the plan seems to be that Corey will be her confidential informant, getting inside Security Solutions to learn if it has any connection to the killings of nine young Long Island women. Security Solutions is a fun-loving outfit, with after-hours parties like Thirsty Thursdays. You’ve got your booze, your broads with names like Tiffany, your cops both present and ex, your politicians, a disbarred lawyer—fertile and dangerous grounds for Corey’s snooping. Like the maze, the plot has “twisting paths with lots of dead ends,” but “you have to wake up real early to pull one over on John Corey.” But before the guns start blasting, he fires his “pocket rocket” into a willing woman, a suspect named Amy. “Emission accomplished,” he later muses. Ah yes, Corey has a million sex jokes that would have teenagers TikTok-ing “ROFLMAO.” Are there nude beaches in Bermuda? He’d love to check
