Fiction Review

There’s so much to discuss when it comes to Agatha Christie! The Poisoned Pen’s recent Booknews has a lengthy post. Barbara Peters, owner of the Pen, shared her comments here.

Christie, Agatha. Poirot Investigates ($9.95). A collection of stories featuring eccentric Hercule Poirot. Knopf has bought the Christies away from Collins, or so it seems, so expect a spate of reissues with probable new material in introductions and such. You can find this in the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3oKgm03

The first collection of short stories featuring one of the world’s favorite fictional detectives, Hercule Poirot

No criminal can outwit Agatha Christie’s famously eccentric Belgian detective as he uses his little grey cells to solve a series of ingenious crimes. From a film star’s disappearing diamond to a death in a locked room to the abduction of a prime minister, no plot is too fiendishly clever to withstand Hercule Poirot’s deductive powers for long. A treat for mystery lovers of all kinds, this collection of short stories proves once gain that Christie is the queen of mystery.

Also PBS will kick off the year 2021 with two TV documentaries focused on the life and publishing career of Agatha Christie, author of more than 60 murder mysteries and easily one of the most popular and successful novelists in the world. The two forthcoming specials are Inside the Mind of Agatha Christie, which will broadcast on January 17 at 10 p.m. EST, and Agatha Christie’s England, which will broadcast January 24 at 10 p.m. EST, on PBS, PBS.org, and on the PBS video app. Both programs will stream online simultaneously with the broadcast and will be available on iOS, Android, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Samsung Smart TV and Chromecast. Both programs will be narrated by Samantha Bond.

Inside the Mind of Agatha Christie offers Christie fans rare access to her family members, scholars and her personal archive. The film will delve into her isolated childhood, her time as a nurse during WWI (which gave her the background medical knowledge for her use of poison, blood and gore in her books), as well as the breakdown of her first marriage and her mysterious disappearance for 11 days in 1926.

Agatha Christie’s England will explore how Christie created a literary universe that shaped the world’s image of England. The settings of her books were taken from real places and the film will explore her surroundings, among them Ugbrook House, where she met her first husband, Abney Hall, the inspiration for Christie’s iconic country house murder settings, and the boathouse at Greenway, her country retreat. Which I visited in 1990 and had a private tour with her grandson Matthew Pritchard. 

Fans of mysteries know that one of the few unbreakable rules is that writers don’t kill pets. In an article for CrimeReads, Sulari Gentill took on that topic. “Every Mystery Writer Knows, You Can Kill Anyone but the Dog”, https://bit.ly/2XF3Pii.

It’s an excellent article, both for the topic and because of Gentill’s writing. So, let’s talk about Sulari Gentill’s writing. Her ninth Rowland Sinclair World War II mystery, Shanghai Secrets, was released this week. You can order that book, and the others in the series, through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2N5KsYB

Here’s the summary of Shanghai Secrets.

In a city full of strangers, be careful whom you trust…

Shanghai, 1935. Black sheep gentleman Rowland Sinclair arrives with his bohemian housemates from Sydney, Australia to explore a new city and take the name Sinclair international with a new class of negotiations. A novice to global commerce, Rowland is under strict instructions from his brother to keep a low profile…but that soon becomes next to impossible. A beautiful Russian taxi girl—who once claimed to be the Princess Anastasia and who danced in Rowly’s arms the night before—is found slain in his suite.

Out of sympathy for the murdered girl and to clear his name, Rowly and his companions embark upon their own investigation. They soon discover there are many people who may have wanted Alexandra Romanovna dead. As they are drawn deeper into Shanghai society and its underworld, Rowly searches for answers in a strange city determined to ruin him.

Exploring the simmering underbelly of Shanghai just years before WWII, Shanghai Secrets is a historical mystery that brings alive an expatriate playground where East and West collide, the stakes are high, and fortunes—and lives—are easily lost.

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After setting out to study astrophysics, graduating in law and then abandoning her legal career to write books, Sulari now grows French black truffles on her farm in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains of NSW. Sulari is author of The Rowland Sinclair Mystery series, historical crime fiction novels (nine in total) set in the 1930s. Sulari’s A Decline in Prophets (the second book in the series) was the winner of the Davitt Award for Best Adult Crime Fiction 2012. She was also shortlisted for Best First Book (A Few Right Thinking Men) for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2011. Paving the New Road was shortlisted for another Davitt in 2013.

Are you interested in a signed copy of the current Hot Book of the Week? The Scorpion’s Tail by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child is the second Nora Kelly book. Signed copies are available through the Web Store, and they come with an exclusive photo of Preston on horseback. You can order a copy, as well as a copy of Old Bones, the first in the series, through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2us95e9

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, referred to The Scorpion’s Tail as a Cussler/Hillerman fusion.

#1 bestselling authors Preston & Child return with the latest book in the new series featuring archaeologist Nora Kelly and FBI Agent Corrie Swanson.

Following the acclaimed debut of OLD BONES, this second “happily anticipated” new thriller in Preston & Child’s series features Nora Kelly, archaeologist at the Santa Fe Archeological Institute, and rookie FBI Agent Corrie Swanson, as they team up to solve a mystery that quickly escalates into nightmare (Booklist).

A mummified corpse, over half a century old, is found in the cellar of an abandoned building in a remote New Mexico ghost town. Corrie is assigned what seems to her a throwaway case: to ID the body and determine cause of death. She brings archaeologist Nora Kelly to excavate the body and lend her expertise to the investigation, and together they uncover something unexpected and shocking: the deceased apparently died in agony, in a fetal position, skin coming off in sheets, with a rictus of horror frozen on his face.

Hidden on the corpse lies a 16^th century Spanish gold cross of immense value.

When they at last identify the body — and the bizarre cause of death — Corrie and Nora open a door into a terrifying, secret world of ancient treasure and modern obsession: a world centered on arguably the most defining, frightening, and transformative moment in American history.

We all know how popular Michael Connelly’s “Bosch” has been on Amazon. Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series was a smash for Netflix over Christmas. Now, Michael Connelly’s Mickey Haller, “The Lincoln Lawyer” could become a series for Netflix. According to Deadline, the first season will be based on the second book in Michael Connelly’s series, The Brass Verdict, https://bit.ly/38wPQkS. You can order that book, and others in the series, through the Web Store. You might want to read it before watching it. https://bit.ly/2RtzGgK

Here’s the storyline for The Brass Verdict.

Defense attorney Mickey Haller and Detective Harry Bosch must either work together or die as they investigate a Hollywood lawyer’s murder in this “epic page-turner” (Library Journal).
Things are finally looking up for defense attorney Mickey Haller. After two years of wrong turns, Haller is back in the courtroom. When Hollywood lawyer Jerry Vincent is murdered, Haller inherits his biggest case yet: the defense of Walter Elliott, a prominent studio executive accused of murdering his wife and her lover. But as Haller prepares for the case that could launch him into the big time, he learns that Vincent’s killer may be coming for him next.

Enter Harry Bosch. Determined to find Vincent’s killer, he is not opposed to using Haller as bait. But as danger mounts and the stakes rise, these two loners realize their only choice is to work together.

Yesterday, Deadline.com reported that Keegan-Michael Key is scheduled to headline a new PI drama called “August Snow”, https://bit.ly/39iuR4D. You may already be familiar with August Snow, the award-winning book by Stephen Mack Jones. It won the Hammett Prize and the Nero Award. In 2019, it was followed by Lives Laid Away. The third book in the series, Dead of Winter, is currently scheduled for a May release. It doesn’t hurt to check out the books now, before they hit TV. You can order them through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3nq12nD

Let me introduce you to August Snow.

Winner of the Hammett Prize and the Nero Award

From the wealthy suburbs to the remains of Detroit’s bankrupt factory districts, August Snow is a fast-paced tale of murder, greed, sex, economic cyber-terrorism, race and urban decay.

Tough, smart, and struggling to stay alive, August Snow is the embodiment of Detroit. The son of an African-American father and a Mexican-American mother, August grew up in the city’s Mexicantown and joined the police force only to be drummed out by a conspiracy of corrupt cops and politicians. But August fought back; he took on the city and got himself a $12 million wrongful dismissal settlement that left him low on friends. He has just returned to the house he grew up in after a year away, and quickly learns he has many scores to settle.

It’s not long before he’s summoned to the palatial Grosse Pointe Estates home of business magnate Eleanore Paget. Powerful and manipulative, Paget wants August to investigate the increasingly unusual happenings at her private wealth management bank. But detective work is no longer August’s beat, and he declines. A day later, Paget is dead of an apparent suicide—which August isn’t buying for a minute.

What begins as an inquiry into Eleanore Paget’s death soon drags August into a rat’s nest of Detroit’s most dangerous criminals, from corporate embezzlers to tattooed mercenaries.

*****

Here’s the information about the forthcoming book, Dead of Winter.

A shadowy Detroit real estate billionaire. A ruthless fixer. A successful Mexicantown family business in their crosshairs. Gentrification has never been bloodier.

Authentico Foods Inc. has been a part of Detroit’s Mexicantown for over thirty years, grown from a home kitchen business to a city-block-long facility that supplies Mexican tortillas to restaurants throughout the Midwest.

Detroit ex-cop and Mexicantown native August Snow has been invited for a business meeting at Authentico Foods. Its owner, Ronaldo Ochoa, is dying, and is being blackmailed into selling the company to an anonymous entity. Worried about his employees, Ochoa wants August to buy it. August has no interest in running a tortilla empire, but he does want to know who’s threatening his neighborhood. Quickly, his investigation takes a devastating turn and he and his loved ones find themselves ensnared in a dangerous net of ruthless billionaire developers. August Snow must fight not only for his life, but for the soul of Mexicantown itself.

*****

Stephen Mack Jones is a published poet, an award-winning playwright, and a recipient of the prestigious Hammett Prize, Nero Award, and the Kresge Arts in Detroit Literary Fellowship. He was born in Lansing, Michigan, and currently lives in the suburbs of Detroit. He worked in advertising and marketing communications for a number of years before turning to fiction. Dead of Winter is his third novel.

As Barbara Peters, the owner of The Poisoned Pen has said, the January event schedule is jampacked. Wait until you see this one. And, it’s only through January 19. Is your favorite author on the schedule, or a new author you want to hear? Find their books in the Web Store. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

Stuart MacBride’s third Ash Henderson novel, The Coffin Maker’s Garden is scheduled for release January 7. MacBride recently talked about writing about serial killers in an interview with Alison Flood in The Guardian. You can find that interview here. https://bit.ly/2XayKTD

In talking about stories of horror and murder, Flood quotes MacBride as saying, “We’ve always loved these kind of stories. You go right back to the days when we lived in caves, and we would sit around our fires and tell stories of the monsters that were outside in the darkness. Crime fiction does exactly that thing,” he says. “The monsters we are scared of as a society are the ones that we see in crime fiction, and the detectives are superheroes without capes. They are King Arthur. They are Beowulf. These are the people that we have always gravitated towards, in our fictions and our stories.”

You can order The Coffin Maker’s Garden, and other books by Stuart MacBride, through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3hMLdGu

A village on the edge…
As a massive storm batters the Scottish coast, Gordon Smith’s home is falling into the North Sea. But the crumbling headland has revealed what he’s got buried in his garden: human remains.

A house full of secrets…
With the storm still raging, it’s too dangerous to retrieve the bodies and waves are devouring the evidence. Which means no one knows how many people Smith’s already killed and how many more he’ll kill if he can’t be stopped.

An investigator with nothing to lose…
The media are baying for blood, the top brass are after a scapegoat, and ex-Detective Inspector Ash Henderson is done playing nice. He’s got a killer to catch, and God help anyone who gets in his way.

*****

Stuart MacBride is the Sunday Times No. 1 bestselling author of the Logan McRae and Ash Henderson novels. His work has won several prizes and in 2015 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Dundee University. Stuart lives in the north-east of Scotland with his wife Fiona, cats Grendel, Onion and Beetroot, and other assorted animals.

Just before the release of Jane Harper’s latest novel, The Survivors (Feb. 2), comes news of the success of the Australian film The Dry, based on her novel of the same name. Deadline reported on the movie’s success in Australia. https://bit.ly/3rSWRnH

You can order copies of Harper’s novels through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2HGHSdO

Here’s the description of The Survivors.

Coming home dredges up deeply buried secrets in The Survivors, a thrilling mystery by New York Times bestselling author Jane Harper

Kieran Elliott’s life changed forever on the day a reckless mistake led to devastating consequences.

The guilt that still haunts him resurfaces during a visit with his young family to the small coastal community he once called home.

Kieran’s parents are struggling in a town where fortunes are forged by the sea. Between them all is his absent brother, Finn.

When a body is discovered on the beach, long-held secrets threaten to emerge. A sunken wreck, a missing girl, and questions that have never washed away…

*****

Here’s the summary of The Dry if you missed it.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER”A breathless page-turner, driven by the many revelations Ms. Harper dreams up…You’ll love [her] sleight of hand…A secret on every page.” —The New York Times”One of the most stunning debuts I’ve ever read… Every word is near perfect.” —David BaldacciA small town hides big secrets in The Dry, an atmospheric, page-turning debut mystery by award-winning author Jane Harper.After getting a note demanding his presence, Federal Agent Aaron Falk arrives in his hometown for the first time in decades to attend the funeral of his best friend, Luke. Twenty years ago when Falk was accused of murder, Luke was his alibi. Falk and his father fled under a cloud of suspicion, saved from prosecution only because of Luke’s steadfast claim that the boys had been together at the time of the crime. But now more than one person knows they didn’t tell the truth back then, and Luke is dead.Amid the worst drought in a century, Falk and the local detective question what really happened to Luke. As Falk reluctantly investigates to see if there’s more to Luke’s death than there seems to be, long-buried mysteries resurface, as do the lies that have haunted them. And Falk will find that small towns have always hidden big secrets.

Two years ago on CrimeReads site, Keith Scribner discussed rural noir, https://bit.ly/3ofsB4j. He said, “The best rural noir transports us and traps us in a place with people who are also trapped there by lifetimes of trouble, poverty, obligations, kinship, or an inability to see beyond the next hilltop. In these stories the people are inseparable from the land and its history.” That beautifully sums up the people in Chris Harding Thornton’s debut novel, Pickard County Atlas. The residents of a county in north-central Nebraska, even a deputy, lead what Thoreau called, “lives of quiet desperation”. You can find Pickard County Atlas in the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3rO8CvR

“An atmospheric, slow-burning beauty of a book, rich with raw-edged lyricism and achingly real characters.” —Tana French, author of The Searcher

Small-town secrets loom large in this spellbinding debut about the aftershocks of crime and trauma that shake a Nebraskan town.

In a dusty town in Nebraska’s rugged sandhills, weary sheriff’s deputy Harley Jensen patrols the streets at night, on the lookout for something—anything—out of the ordinary. It’s July 1978, and the heat is making people ornery, restless. That and the Reddick family patriarch has decided, decades after authorities ended the search for his murdered boy’s body, to lay a headstone. Instead of bringing closure, this decision is the spark that threatens to set Pickard County ablaze.

On a fateful night after the memorial service, Harley tails the youngest Reddick and town miscreant, Paul, through the abandoned farms and homes outside their run-down town. The pursuit puts Harley in the path of Pam Reddick, a restless young woman looking for escape, bent on cutting the ties of motherhood and marriage. Filled with desperate frustration, Pam is drawn to Harley’s dark history, not unlike that of her husband, Rick—a man raised in the wreckage of a brother’s violent death and a mother’s hardened fury.

Unfolding over six tense days, Pickard County Atlas sets Harley and the Reddicks on a collision course—propelling them toward an incendiary moment that will either redeem or end them. Engrossing, darkly funny, and real, Chris Harding Thornton’s debut rings with authenticity and a nuanced sense of place even as it hums with menace, introducing an astonishing new voice in suspense.

*****

Chris Harding Thornton, a seventh-generation Nebraskan, holds an MFA from the University of Washington and a PhD from the University of Nebraska, where she currently teaches. She has worked as a quality assurance overseer at a condom factory, a jar-lid screwer at a plastics plant, a closer at Burger King, a record store clerk, an all-ages club manager, and a PR writer. Pickard County Atlas is her first novel.

When I read Jess Lourey’s Bloodline, it reminded me of Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives and Rosemary’s Baby. I’m not the only one. The reviewer for Publishers Weekly mentioned those books. Doreen Sheridan’s review for Criminal Element mentioned those two books, https://bit.ly/2X3tukr If you’re a fan of those earlier books, you might want to check out Bloodline. You can order it through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2rsDgQP

Jess Lourey is the Amazon Charts bestselling author of Unspeakable Things, The Catalain Book of Secrets, the Salem’s Cipher thrillers, and the Mira James mysteries, among many other works, including young adult, short stories, and nonfiction. An Agatha, Anthony, and Lefty Award nominee, Jess is a tenured professor of creative writing and sociology and a leader of writing retreats. She is also a recipient of The Loft’s Excellence in Teaching fellowship, a Psychology Today blogger, and a TEDx presenter. Check out her TEDx Talk for the inspiration behind her first published novel. When she’s not leading writing workshops, reading, or spending time with her friends and family, you can find her working on her next story. Discover more at www.jessicalourey.com.

Perfect town. Perfect homes. Perfect families. It’s enough to drive some women mad…

In a tale inspired by real events, pregnant journalist Joan Harken is cautiously excited to follow her fiancé back to his Minnesota hometown. After spending a childhood on the move and chasing the screams and swirls of news-rich city life, she’s eager to settle down. Lilydale’s motto, “Come Home Forever,” couldn’t be more inviting.

And yet, something is off in the picture-perfect village.

The friendliness borders on intrusive. Joan can’t shake the feeling that every move she makes is being tracked. An archaic organization still seems to hold the town in thrall. So does the sinister secret of a little boy who vanished decades ago. And unless Joan is imagining things, a frighteningly familiar figure from her past is on watch in the shadows.

Her fiancé tells her she’s being paranoid. He might be right. Then again, she might have moved to the deadliest small town on earth.