TREAD OF ANGELS by Rebecca Roanhorse

Dimpna’s past is about to be torn wide open, revealing various crimes, including her rape by Johnny’s son Sean O’Reilly, and the revelation that what she remembers is not always the truth.

Exciting, convoluted, and rich with compelling characters, this is the best of O’Connor’s Irish mysteries to date.

MURDER AT THE JUBILEE RALLY

Shames, Terry Severn House (256 pp.) $29.99 | Oct. 4, 2022 978-1-4483-0934-4

What’s more dangerous, a motorcycle rally or a teenage girl? Texas police chief Samuel Craddock is about to find out. Not everyone is thrilled that the yearly Jubilee Motorcycle Rally is about to come to Jarrett Creek. Some locals want to ban it. But the merchants who’ve parlayed a good deal of money from the event are happy to put up with a little aggravation. The sheriff brokers a truce after a nasty war of words breaks out between Lily Deverell, who’s spearheading the campaign to shut down the rally, and Amber Johnson, a store owner whose husband was badly injured while riding with his motorcycle club, leaving her to support their family by herself. Meanwhile, Craddock offers to take his nephew’s teenage daughter, Hailey, for a while to see if he can straighten out her recent bad behavior. Visiting the rally grounds to check out security, Sam notices Amber coming out of an RV. When, the next evening, she’s found dead behind the music venue at the rally, Sam and his deputy, Maria Trevino, investigate even though the case is assigned to the overburdened Department of Public Safety and Sam already has his hands full with Hailey, who alternates between acting like the sweet girl he remembers and a sneaky, hormonal teen who’s been hiding a much older boyfriend. At least Hailey takes an interest in the murder investigation and makes some new friends. The town rallies around the Johnson family, but Sam’s discovery that some of Amber’s income comes from turning tricks opens up a whole new avenue to investigate both in town and at the rally.

A neat character-intensive combo of clever police work and family angst.

DISCO DEAD

Talley, Marcia Severn House (208 pp.) $29.99 | Nov. 1, 2022 978-1-4483-0795-1

A do-gooder gets a new mission as part of an amateur sleuthing group that’s working on a murder from the disco era. Hannah Ives is one of those people who’s always doing something. She informs her adult daughter, Emily, whom she runs into at the crowded Annapolis Trader Joe’s, that her next stop is the cemetery, where she’s been taking pictures of headstones for relatives who may not be able to see them in person through FindAGrave. com (a real website). Emily can’t help but tease Hannah about her constant do-something nature, but Hannah’s involvement with all sorts of projects has brought her a lot of joy and a lot of experience solving mysteries. At St. Luke’s Cemetery some 20 minutes later, Hannah runs into Isabel Randall, from local station WBNF-TV, who recognizes Hannah from her 18 previous investigations. After Izzy tells Hannah the story of Amy Madison, a young woman killed by an unknown assailant after a night at a popular local disco in 1978, Hannah joins Izzy and the group of citizen detectives who call themselves the Silent Sleuths in an effort to find out what happened to Amy and give her poor parents some relief. Her meticulous research uses DNA details found at the scene to suggest a shocking twist: Amy’s murder may not be an isolated event but the first work of a serial killer. Worse yet, if the Silent Sleuths can’t find evidence the killer has been stopped, is it possible that he could kill again?

The telling details that urge readers along the way might even end up teaching them something.

science fiction & fantasy

TREAD OF ANGELS

Roanhorse, Rebecca Saga/Simon & Schuster (208 pp.) $22.99 | Nov. 15, 2022 978-1-982166-18-2

When her younger sister is arrested for murder, Celeste Semyaza must scramble to prove her innocence. In the world of Roanhorse’s new novel, society is divided between the Elect and the Fallen. The Fallen are descendants of the demons who followed Lucifer and rebelled against God. As a result, they are largely discriminated against and looked down upon as sinful and evil by the privileged Elect. In the mining town of Goetia, however, the Fallen and the Elect live together in order to mine a precious substance called divinity, which the Fallen are better equipped to handle than the Elect. Celeste, a card dealer, and her sister, Mariel, a singer, are half Fallen, half Elect. When Mariel is accused of murdering a Virtue, the most respected of all the Elect humans, Celeste is determined to find evidence of her innocence and set her free. Roanhorse, an expert worldbuilder, sets up her fantasy-Western universe and her take on angels and demons as fantasy tropes