I can’t decide whether these gripping novels are mysteries that thrill or thrillers that mystify. However, they all look like they will deliver a satisfying brain teaser in an interesting setting with a non-stereo-typical detective. Enjoy.
Heaven, My Home
Attica Locke
Hardcover, $27
On Street September 17, 2019 / Mulholland Books
Texas Ranger Darren Matthews is on the hunt for a missing 9 year old boy. Did I mention that the lawman is African- American, and the boy’s family are white supremacists? Levi King knew he should have gone home sooner, instead of dawdling in the way of small boys–now he is alone in the dark on Caddo Lake, and his boat’s motor has just died. Meanwhile, the one man who can help him (Matthews) must avoid his own mother’s emotional blackmail and rely on people from a small town up Highway 59 for help–a town where the racial attitudes of the antebellum era are alive and well.
Why It’s Worth Choosing
- The author has a large list of credits behind her name: A former writer for the TV show Empire, her first mystery, Bluebird, Bluebird, won a 2018 Edgar Award. Her novel Pleasantville won a 2016 Harper Lee Award for Legal Fiction.
- The novel’s subplot could be ripped from today’s headlines as Matthews battles suspicions and prejudices that are centuries old as well as new threats reignited in today’s political climate.
The Body Lies: A Novel
Jo Baker
Hardback, $25.95
On Street: 19 June, 2019 / Knopf
When a young writer accepts a job at a university in the remote English countryside, escaping the scene of a violent assault, she has no idea of what she is in for. One of her students starts turning in chapters that blur the line between fiction and reality. Magical realism is one thing; recognizing yourself as the main character in your student’s book is quite another. And the student has written his professor a horrific fate. Can she stop life from imitating art before it’s too late?
Why it’s Worth Choosing
- This timely, riveting novel of psychological suspense explores the question of how we live as women in the world when the stakes are dangerously high.
- Are you a fellow Anglophile? Then nothing more needs to be said.
In the Valley of the Devil: A Mystery
Hank Early
Hardcover, $26.99
On Street: July 10, 2019 / Crooked Lane
This ain’t Earl Marcus’s first rodeo in the North Georgia mountains. The PI has encountered the dark abyss of depravity before–for example, when confronting the unspeakable evil unleashed by his father’s fundamentalist Church of the Holy Flame. Unfortunately, that is just the beginning. Tasked with what appears to be a routine job, Earl stumbles into a mysterious cornfield where an old mountain legend appears to have been awakened. And just as he starts hearing rumors of a creepy place in the woods behind the cornfield–a place where a killer collects skulls–Earl’s partner Mary Hawkins vanishes. Now, on an old train trestle over a river at the cornfield’s, Earl must confront his worst fears, or lose Mary forever.
Why It’s Worth Choosing
- For those who like harrowing mysteries that make you sweat as you race through the pages, as desperate as the detective (or more) to solve the mystery
- You know the author has a sense of humor because his bio states that he “spent much of his youth in the mountains of North Georgia, but never held a snake or got struck by lightning.”
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