19 minute read
IN THE UPPER COUNTRY by Kai Thomas
in the upper country
IN THE UPPER COUNTRY
Thomas, Kai Viking (352 pp.) $27.00 | Jan. 10, 2023 978-0-593-48950-5
A killing in 19th-century Canada sparks a chain of revelations in this fine debut novel. It’s the summer of 1859 in a town in southern Canada called Dunmore, “populated by refugees of slavery.” Lensinda Martin is a housekeeper, a newspaper reporter, and a young Black woman with healing knowledge who is asked to help a White Ohioan shot by one of the two women he’s been hunting under the auspices of the Fugitive Slave Act. Sinda arrives too late to save him, but she interviews Cash, the shooter, in jail, seeking a backstory that will bolster the woman’s legal case. Instead, Cash asks her: “Will you barter with me? A tale for a tale?” So begins a beguiling exchange of personal stories that will draw surprising links between Sinda and Cash while dipping into slave narratives that highlight historical relations between Blacks and Native Americans, especially in the War of 1812. In one such tale, a young slave in Virginia named Chiron is led to “the underlands, a Negro village of warriors” built entirely from underground tunnels and chambers. Chiron will meet a Native American named John whose journal will provide some of these stories and whose Black wife is young Cash. Other Native Americans will capture Cash and sell her into slavery in Kentucky. Two of her children will be fierce warriors in the 1812 war. Returning later to the underlands, Chiron will hear a story from its ruler, King Cullin, that is crucial to his family. Time in this novel meanders between past and present like a forest path, and the narratives drift back and forth across the U.S.–Canada border. The harshly real and the fantastic mingle in ways that recall Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Water Dancer and Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black. What’s most impressive is Thomas’ imaginative power; sure-handed, often lyrical prose; and strong, complex, resilient women.
An exceptional work that mines a rich historical vein.
THE LONG WAY OUT
Wiley, Michael Severn House (240 pp.) $29.99 | Jan. 3, 2023 978-1-4483-0984-9
After a five-year hiatus that Wiley devoted to franchise hero Sam Kelson, ex-con Franky Dast returns for another shot at getting his life straightened out and incidentally solving some murders. It’s easy to see why the author’s left Franky to stew in the Florida heat for so long. Even though he didn’t commit the heinous crimes for which Police Det. Bill Higby sent him to death row, he’s not exactly likable. When Alejandra Soto asks him to look into the sudden disappearance of her 14-year-old daughter, he declines and doesn’t change his mind until Antonia Soto’s found shot to death in Clapboard Creek. Higby and his somewhat less hostile partner, Lt. Det. Deborah Holt, are convinced the killer is Carlos Medina, the older boyfriend who got Antonia pregnant. But Franky thinks the murder is the work of someone with a deeper animus, and his suspicions are fueled by racist city councilman Randall Lehmann, whom he knocks down at a pro-immigration rally staged by attorney Demetrius Jones as the TV cameras roll. None of this endears Franky to his old nemesis, who’s unconvinced by the murder of Kumar Mehta that all this could have something to do with race. After all, Mehta was a model South Asian, a successful man in town to visit his equally successful children. The cops don’t get it even when someone scrawls racist graffiti on the walls of Franky’s hotel room and ensures his ouster by tossing a Molotov cocktail at the place. The abduction of Cynthia, Franky’s hypermetabolic lover, kicks the case into high gear, but still not for the police.
A searing portrait of an acknowledged lowlife bent on doing God’s work.
ALL THE DANGEROUS THINGS
Willingham, Stacy Minotaur (336 pp.) $27.99 | Jan. 10, 2023 978-1-2508-0385-6
A bereaved mother’s year of sleepless nights is turned even more dire by percolating revelations about her past and present. Isabelle Drake, a lifestyle reporter for The Grit who turned freelancer so that she could marry Grit publisher Ben Drake without raising too many eyebrows, hasn’t slept through the night since her 18-month-old son, Mason, was snatched from his crib as his parents snoozed a few yards away. She’s been so tireless in pursing leads, even breaking the nose of a supermarket cashier she suddenly learned had a record, that Det. Arthur Dozier of the Savannah Police Department has tuned her out and warned her off the case. Exhausted from touring true-crime conventions across the region, publicizing the tale of her lost boy and the breakup of her marriage that followed, Isabelle agrees to tell her story at length to podcaster Waylon Spencer so that he can spread it more widely while she searches for sleep. But his questions are so unsettling that she begins to wonder if she was the one responsible for Mason’s disappearance—and what her role might have been in a family calamity more than 20 years earlier that was likely papered over because her father was a South Carolina congressman from a long line of congressmen. The windup is anything but tidy, for the multiple mysteries end up requiring multiple culprits. No matter: Willingham is so relentless in linking Isabelle’s sleeplessness to her deepening sense of waking nightmare that fans can expect some seriously sleepless nights themselves.
“People love violence—from a distance,” reflects the protagonist. This one’s for readers who can love it up close.
small world
SMALL WORLD
Zigman, Laura Ecco/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $27.99 | Jan. 10, 2023 978-0-06-308828-3
Two adult siblings move in together and struggle to come to terms with the long-ago loss of their disabled sister and their own troubled relationship. Like most siblings, the middle-aged Mellishman sisters at the heart of Zigman’s amusing yet poignant new novel have chapters of history propping them up and weighing them down. Newly divorced Joyce, an archivist in Cambridge, is getting used to solitude again, whiling away her time on a neighborhood site called Small World, turning her neighbors’ queries and complaints into strange but potent poetry. The act, she says, is therapeutic—and also easier than addressing the nagging questions about her own life. When Lydia, her older sister, leaves LA for the East Coast, Joyce invites her to move in for a while, secretly hoping proximity will force them to forge a bond they never quite managed to build. But they still can’t seem to communicate or talk about their past. Their childhoods were laser-focused on Eleanor, their severely disabled sister, who died at 10. But although Eleanor’s life was short, her impact was lasting, especially on her sisters, who learned to hide their own fears and problems in order to focus on hers. Zigman, who excels at depicting the emotional push and pull of sibling relationships, examines the conflicts and grief that play out in a family dealing with a disabled child with compassion and honesty. Yet she never loses her sharp sense of humor, as evidenced by the hilarious ongoing war between Joyce and her new upstairs neighbors, who seem to be running a yoga studio. As she reveals secrets previously unknown to Joyce, Zigman doesn’t shy away from discussing the hardships the Mellishmans faced, but she also highlights small moments of wonder and joy that illuminate the sisters’ shared path. The world might feel small, Joyce learns, but the power of hope always looms large.
A compassionate, often funny examination of shared family grief and love.
mystery
KNITS, KNOTS, AND KNIVES
Caldwell, Emmie Berkley (288 pp.) $8.99 paper | Dec. 6, 2022 978-0-593-10172-8
A Civil War reenactment is turned deadly by the discovery that a body on the battlefield isn’t just acting. History comes to life with the annual celebration of the Battle of Crandalsburg, complete with Civil War reenactors presenting live action role play of the battle. While some of the roles folks have chosen seem a little contrived by their inflated sense of importance—like that of Arden Sprouse, who claims his Capt. Anderson is a newly discovered forebear—it’s all in good fun, and people are excited to show off their ability to capture the era. Lia Geiger, who sells her custom knitwear at the Crandalsburg Craft Fair, enjoys taking in the pre-battle sights with her fellow vendors and the Ninth Street Knitters. She’s needed a little more excitement in her life since her daughter, Hayley, left the nest to live on her own and work at the Weber Alpaca Farm. Lia’s been stalled since the death of her husband, Tom, and though even Hayley suggests that it’s time to move on, Lia isn’t ready to get close to anyone, not even when town police chief Pete Sullivan wants to turn their friendship into something more. But she gets a whole lot closer to Pete when she discovers that one of the reenactors on the battlefield isn’t just playing dead, and the two of them team up to get to the bottom of what’s happened.
A mild mystery with little to object to or dig into.
HIDE
Clark, Tracy Thomas & Mercer (384 pp.) $16.99 paper | Jan. 1, 2023 978-1-5420-3757-0
A Chicago cop still mourning her late partner transfers to a new precinct just in time to catch a truly creepy case. There’s no question of Det. Harriet Foster returning from two months’ leave to her old precinct, which is haunted by her memories of Det. Glynnis Thompson from before and after her suicide. When Sgt. Sharon Griffin, her new boss, partners her with Det. Jim Lonergan, aptly describing him as a serviceable asshole, the two tackle the fatal stabbing of DePaul student Peggy Birch, an activist working to reform the police force, on the Riverwalk. Lonergan naturally assumes that Keith Ainsley, the Northwestern student found unconscious a few feet from the body, is responsible, but Harriet is less ready to sweat Ainsley, partly because, like him, she’s Black, partly because Lonergan puts her back up. No sooner has the forensic lab announced that the blood on Ainsley’s clothes isn’t Peggy’s than a second corpse turns up, this one sporting the patch of Peggy’s blood that Lonergan had longed to find on Ainsley. A third murder makes it seem more likely that a serial killer who preys on redhaired women is at work. As psychiatrist Mariana Silva inserts herself into the case with a persistence that doesn’t bode well for her own life span, a succession of cutaways to the twins Bodie and Amelia Morgan—whose father, accountant Tom Morgan, felt compelled years ago to kill a series of redheads—broadly implies that the new murders are very much a family affair. But which member of the family?
Solid, unspectacular work from a writer who knows the dark side of the Windy City.
THE BIG BUNDLE
Collins, Max Allan Hard Case Crime (304 pp.) $22.99 | Dec. 6, 2022 978-1-78909-852-5
A real-life 1953 abduction sends veteran fictional Chicago shamus Nathan Heller to Kansas City and far beyond. Whoever snatched 6-year-old Bobby Greenlease from his school is exasperatingly dumb. By the time Bob Greenlease, the wealthy owner of a chain of Cadillac dealerships, calls Heller in on the case, the kidnappers have already sent several garbled messages with unclear directions about how to drop off the record $600,000 ransom they’ve demanded and haven’t shown any inclination to pick up. Greenlease’s faith that Heller’s matchless underworld connections will turn up a new angle pays off in a tip Heller gets from cabdrivers’ union rep Barney Baker, a former bouncer for Bugsy Siegel. Barney tells Heller that top-flight St. Louis mobster Joe Costello has been approached by Steve Strand, an insurance agent looking for a “real nice girl” for the night and a way to launder some serious money. Could it be the Greenlease ransom? Heller makes contact with Costello, who’s as hard-nosed as you’d expect; with Strand, who’s one slippery customer; and with Sandy O’Day, that real nice girl. Students of history, or readers who’ve peeked ahead into Collins’ entertainingly detailed appendix, will know that things won’t end well for most of them. And they’ll be surprised to find Heller, five years after half the ransom money disappears, invited back on the case by Rackets Committee chief counsel Robert F. Kennedy, whose money he won’t take, and Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa, whose money he will. Neither Heller nor Collins supplies the closure Bob Greenlease longs for; this case unfolds more like a maze of Midwestern fleshpots than a whodunit.
In the words of the character who has the most to lose, “It’s been like something out of the Marx Brothers.”
BAKE OFFED
Corrigan, Maya Kensington (304 pp.) $8.99 paper | Nov. 29, 2022 978-1-4967-3457-0
A mystery fanfest makes the perfect place for murder. Cafe manager Val Deniston is helping her best friend, organizer Bethany O’Shay, as a volunteer at the Maryland Mystery Fan Fest. Also on hand is Val’s grandfather Don Myer, known for his five-ingredient recipe column and his sleuthing abilities, which have often gotten both of them in trouble. A rare Nero Wolfe recipe collection Granddad finds in his attic includes the perfect recipe for him to use in the festival’s baking contest. Everyone attending is a mystery fan, and many dress in costume. So of course, lots of them think it’s part of the festival when a real murder occurs. First, bake-off contestant Cynthia Sweet gets a vaguely threatening note. Then, someone steals Granddad’s recipe box. Finally, Val’s awakened by a whistling teakettle. When she enlists a security guard to check on Cynthia, they find her dead in her bed. Cynthia wasn’t exactly universally beloved, and the family of her late husband had a particularly good reason to want her dead before the date on which she would inherit a pile of money. The beautiful family poison ring Cynthia flaunted makes Val wonder if poison was what killed her. The sheriff’s deputy assigned to the case, knowing that Val is a bit of a sleuth, mentions that Cynthia is the second person to die alone in the hotel—the first murder remains unsolved. Once murder is confirmed, there’s no dearth of sleuths seeking to solve the complicated case.
Granddad is a hoot, and a clever method of faking an alibi adds to the fun.
THROUGH THE LIQUOR GLASS
Fox, Sarah Kensington (304 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 29, 2022 978-1-4967-3403-7
When a food critic is killed, a Vermont pub owner is determined to keep her boyfriend from becoming a suspect. Sadie Coleman is just about to lose it when she sees food writer Dominique Girard in her pub. Could this be her time to get the Inkwell to stand out? Or will it mean some sort of doom? Dominique wrote a damning review of former local restaurateur George Keeler’s place that the owner blames for it going bottoms-up not long after. And George wasn’t too shy to let Dominique know that it’s all her fault. Sadie doesn’t want to worry about Dominique too much because she’s already anxiously anticipating her mother’s upcoming visit and what judgments she might bring. Not only will her mother be visiting the new home Sadie’s chosen, but she’ll be meeting Sadie’s boyfriend, Grayson Blake, for the very first time. If her mother doesn’t like Grayson, Sadie knows she’ll just crumble, because he’s such an incredible new part of her life, as she helpfully reminds readers at every turn. Sadie’s trying to keep calm as she worries what’s next when the unthinkable happens: Dominique is dispatched—murdered! What’s even worse is that the police suspect her Grayson, who Sadie absolutely knows wouldn’t harm a fly. Now Grayson’s on the run, evading the cops and hiding out, which Sadie thinks completely unfair because it means they aren’t having any quality time together. Maybe if she can figure out who really offed Dominique Sadie can get her relationship with Grayson back on track. After all, that’s what matters most.
Solid writing, content not so much.
death in the margins
DEATH IN THE MARGINS
Gilbert, Victoria Crooked Lane (336 pp.) $26.99 | Dec. 6, 2022 978-1-63910-130-6
When an unpopular dancer is murdered, an amateur sleuth sets out to find the killer. Dancer Richard Muir, the husband of library director Amy Muir, is staging a production featuring local talent. Though the performers range from children to professionals, Richard’s only real problem is Meredith Fox, whose excellent dancing abilities are undermined by her abrasive personality and her jealousy of other dancers. In the past, she’d dumped Richard to enter into a disastrous—and short-lived—marriage with the wealthy dancer Nate Broyhill, and now she’s insulted an autistic child, and she’s had bad relationships with plenty of others. When Amy finds young dancer Conner Vogler standing over Meredith’s body clutching a bloody knife, she doesn’t assume he’s guilty, but the police do. Fortunately, Chief Deputy Brad Tucker is an old friend who’s willing to at least listen to her doubts. Knowing her sleuthing abilities, he encourages her to poke into other possible motives. Nate’s mother had married into the wealthy Lance family, which put up money to finance his failed dance company, leaving him at odds with his half brother, whose interests are strictly equestrian. Nate becomes a suspect when Amy recalls that she’d seen him loitering outside the theater. But he’s far from the only one who hated Meredith. Amy’s researching abilities stand her in good stead as she methodically investigates possible motives.
Believable characters and a thorny mystery.
SHOWSTOPPER
Lovesey, Peter Soho Crime (336 pp.) $27.95 | Dec. 6, 2022 978-1-641-29470-6
Superintendent Peter Diamond and Bath’s Major Crime Investigation Team struggle to figure out who’s responsible for a six-year stretch of mishaps plaguing a popular TV program. Daisy Summerfield, the veteran performer on Swift who plays bad-girl heroine Caitlin Swift’s mobbed-up mother, is felled by a heart attack when she returns home unexpectedly and confronts a burglar. There’s no way her death can be murder, yet it draws attention to a mind-boggling series of misfortunes that have befallen Swift ever since Trixie Playfair, whom creator/producer Mary Wroxeter originally cast as Caitlin Swift, abruptly withdrew over a devastating panic attack and was replaced by glamourpuss Sabine San Sebastian in 2013, before shooting even began. An engineer’s been burned in a fire in a sound equipment van; two stuntmen were injured in a rooftop chase; assistant producer Dave Tudor has gone missing; Dan Burbage, who played Sgt. Monaghan, suffered permanent brain damage in a climbing accident; and Mary Wroxeter herself died of acute alcohol poisoning, presumably from four vodkas too many. To top it off, Jacob Nicol, a rigger who’d just started to work on the production, upstages Daisy Summerfield by vanishing from a location shoot at World War II airfield Charmy Down. Diamond doesn’t believe in coincidences, but he’s hard-pressed to find a pattern behind these wide-ranging calamities. Fans who join the hunt looking for a single master key may well be disappointed; Lovesey’s greatest achievement here is sifting through the wreckage of Swift to produce a logical motive and a culprit you really should have suspected.
Another triumph for a veteran sleuth who’s pretty unstoppable himself.
DEATH RIDES A PONY
Miller, Carol Severn House (224 pp.) $29.99 | Dec. 6, 2022 978-0-7278-5095-9
The connection a pair of mystical North Carolina sisters has with a shady realtor threatens to make the women suspects when he’s offed during a charity festival. Summer and Hope Bailey, the owners of Bailey’s Boutique, have talents that range from knowing about mystical herbs to reading tarot and making modest predictions about the future. The specialty shop is the perfect place to sell their New Age wares and give readings to fellow Asheville residents like patron Rosemarie Potter and her devoted pug, Percy. But making predictions outside the shop isn’t standard practice for either of the sisters, and they’re miffed when Gram signs them up to do palmistry at the upcoming charity festival. They’d refuse if Gram’s main motivation didn’t seem to be getting a little closer to Morris, her fellow festival organizer. After all, Summer and Hope would never stand in the way of potential romance. Besides, Summer wants someone to be lucky in love after her split from her cheating husband, whom both sisters have dubbed Shifty Gary. It’s hard to believe Shifty Gary could do worse than hold up their divorce and try to keep the house to himself, but now he’s hired Davis Scott, an equally untrustworthy realtor, to sell his and Summer’s place, and Summer fears she’s going to lose big time. Her haunches are raised not only by her history with her ex, but by a quick tarot reading Hope gives her that shows first the Five of Coins and then Death. The reading turns all too literal when Scott’s killed during the fundraising festival, making the sisters fear that their link to the realtor will point the finger at them.
A gently paranormal setting features a story readers won’t need a crystal ball to figure out.
DEATH BY ARTS AND CRAFTS
Morgan, Alexis Kensington (336 pp.) $8.99 paper | Dec. 27, 2022 978-1-4967-3968-1
No good deed goes unpunished when a ladies’ getaway morphs into a murder hunt. Together with Dayna Fisk and Bridey Kyser, two of her friends, Snowberry Creek Town Council member Abby McCree uses her assignment to assist with the town’s first arts and crafts fair to check out some other nearby fairs. The women do some early Christmas shopping and meet vendors who will be coming to the Snowberry fair. At the last stop on the tour, Abby goes to check out a psychic named Madam G and gets a disturbing reading. One of the star attractions at that fair is metalworker Josiah Garth, whose niece, Jenny, talks to Abby while trying to ignore a nasty argument between Josiah and an unknown man. Meanwhile, Dayna, a potter, needs to have a talk with Wendy, her business partner. They take turns hosting their booth at fairs, and Dayna’s wares rarely sell when Wendy is in charge. When she gets back home, Abby is delighted to see her dog, Zeke, who was watched by Tripp Blackston, her tenant and burgeoning love interest. Before the Snowberry fair even opens, Tripp’s pal Gage Logan, the chief of police, and homicide detective Ben Earle, both of whom Abby knows from past cases, turn up to ask why her business cards were found at a crime scene— by Josiah Garth’s dead body. And when Wendy disappears, the loud argument she’d had with Dayna at the fair makes Abby’s friend a suspect. No slouch as an investigator, Abby is drawn into the case by the suspicion cast on Dayna. Tripp joins her in order to protect her and use his own skills to help solve what turns out to be a whole series of crimes.
