Reviews – Page 15 – Crime Fiction Review

Other People’s Houses by Claire Mackintosh

Cover of Other People's Houses shows a swimming pool surrounded by hedges under a yellow sky. Sourcebooks
Published September 16, 2025
Reviewed by Barbara Fister

Detective Constable Ffion Morgan is frustrated. Her landlord has given her a month to find a new place to live, but the real estate agent who should be bringing her a contract on a new house keeps avoiding her calls. Her opinion of estate agents isn’t very high when she’s landed with a new case: a body found upside down in a kayak. The victim was an estate agent, one of a group that has been holding a corporate retreat at a holiday rental in Wales, and they seem to be a hard-drinking, competitive bunch. While she works on her case in Wales, her boyfriend Leo, a detective sergeant on the English side of the border begins investigating a set of strange burglaries at The Hill, a neighborhood of luxury homes. Meanwhile, everyone is obsessed with a popular podcast that’s attempting to solve a years-old murder case. As often happens in mysteries, if less frequently in real life, these cases gradually become braided together.

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Gray Dawn by Walter Mosely

Cover of Gray Dawn shows a sixties-era car parked in front of a mid-century modern house with palm trees in the background. Mulholland
Published September 16, 2025
Reviewed by Mary-Jane Oltarzewski

Each of the novels in Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins series, going back to 1990’s Devil in a Blue Dress, stands alone as a compelling murder mystery, populated by a colorful (pun intended) cast of characters. Taken together, however, they are, as Mosley says, “kind of like a twentieth-century memoir, a fast-paced unspooling of events that came from a people … that had been fighting for liberation and equality longer than any living soul could remember,” who have “worked hard, suffered terribly, and despite all that, made this country a shining example, a beacon of freedom in the face of freedom denied.” This description, while absolutely accurate, overlooks an important aspect of the “memoir” : the development and maturation of Ezekiel Rawlins, from an embittered loner stalking the dark streets of post-war L.A. , to a man deeply committed to protecting his own family, and other families as well.

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Clown Town by Mick Herron

Soho
Published September 9, 2025
Reviewed by Barbara Fister

The Slough House team, past and present, are back in the ninth full-length outing for the crew of hapless has-been spies. For those new to the series (where have you been?) Mick Herron has invented an office situated in a rundown building in London where M15 agents who have washed out for one reason or another are sent to spend their days doing pointless busywork under the direction of the gaseous and crude Jackson Lamb, who berates them regularly but would never, ever betray them. Here, the old gang comes together – those who are still alive – to do something counter-intuitive, to save the life of a man who they despise.

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The Glass Eel by J. J. Viertel

The cover of The Glass Eel shows a waterfront building on stilts reflected in water overlaid by an eel winding across the image. Penzler / Mysterious Press
Published September 9, 2025
Reviewed by Barbara Fister

The glass eel is a curious creature. Born in the Sargasso Sea, it makes its way as a tiny, translucent fingerling, joining vast schools of eels to ride ocean currents to the coast of Maine. There it travels up streams to live in freshwater before returning as an adult to the Caribbean to start another generation. For years they were of little interest to American palettes, but a shortage in Asia led to a boom in export prices. A Maine fisherman can earn over two thousand dollars a pound for the voluminous, yet now endangered eels. It’s the competition for this bounty that powers the plot of this novel. Some licensed exporters are willing to pay bribes to dodgy political figures to relax regulations; some without licenses are willing to resort to violence to protect their secret trade. And into the middle of it all Jeanette King finds herself entangled in the slippery, slimy business.

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The Hatchet Girls by Joe R. Lansdale

Cover of The Hatchet Girls shows a pink hatchet with three women's faces on it against a black background. Mulholland
Published August 19, 2025
Reviewed by Mary-Jane Oltarzewski

Hap and Leonard are still the best and unlikeliest of friends, but they’ve come a long way since they got into and out of trouble in the first of Joe R. Leonard’s series of quick-witted, violent, and aggressively entertaining novels that have occasionally been described as “redneck noir.” In the early days, Leonard Pine – a gay, Black, conservative, country-music loving combat veteran, and Hap Collins – a white man who did time in Leavenworth for refusing to serve in Vietnam – were a couple of day laborers, barely scratching out a living in Laborde, a small town on the Sabine River in East Texas. A few decades and more than a dozen books later, the mismatched pair are still expressing their loyalty and affection by way of any number of profane, scatological and wildly inventive insults, and are doing pretty well for themselves.

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Murder By the Book by Amie Schaumberg

Cover of Murder by the Book shows old-fashioned typewriter keys spelling out the title with a bouquet of flowers beside them against a black background. Mira
Published August 19, 2025
Reviewed by Meredith Frazier

In Murder By the Book, Amie Schaumberg weaves elements of art and literature into a chilling mystery.

Emma Reilly is a literature professor at a small college who stumbles onto a murder that seems to have been staged to appeal directly to the way her brain works, combining Pre-Raphaelite art with literary references to create symbolism she’s trained to decipher. Recognizing the danger of amateur detecting, however, the police—particularly her potential love interest Ian—are less than enthusiastic about letting her get involved. But Emma is unable to turn off her brain and its insistence on unraveling the puzzle, and soon she and a group of friends find themselves deeply embroiled in a serial murderer’s narrative.

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Please Don’t Lie by Christina Baker Kline & Anne Burt

Cover of Please Don't Lie shows a modernist house with its windows illuminated and two figures standing apart looking out. Thomas & Mercer
Published September 1, 2025
Reviewed by Sharon Mensing

Set in the Adirondack Mountains, this thriller is imbued with the sense of menace that many city dwellers feel when confronted with remote forest settings. But here it is not the wilderness itself, but rather the people who have headed to the mountains and forests of upstate New York, who are the threat. Hayley, who is most comfortable in New York City where she is surrounded by other people and knows the concrete terrain, has moved to the isolated home inherited by her new husband. Brandon, who grew up in that house, does not seem to understand how terrified the sights and sounds of the remote setting, combined with lack of a social environment, make Hayley. When another young, transplanted couple (Megan and Tyler) arrives on the property, the scene is set for what becomes an intense psychological thriller. The book screams along at a fast pace, propelled by a present-tense telling, so set some time aside to read it. I found it nearly impossible to put down, and I read it in two sittings.

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A Special Interest in Murder by Mette Ivie Harrison

Cover of A Special Interest in Murder shows an open red lipstick against a dark blue background with the title written across the cover at a diagonal. Severn House
Published September 2, 2025
Reviewed by Barbara Fister

Ada Latia, happily divorced after an unhappy marriage, is troubled by a link her ex has sent to her. It’s from a social media site, a story designed to spark outrage, claiming that an autistic child has accidentally killed a classmate at a school for autistics. She stares at the photo of the dead girl, a host of questions forming in her mind. The body seems posed, the room around her has been staged, and someone put makeup on the child’s face so she doesn’t look dead. Looking closer, Ada realizes its the line of makeup she invented for the cosmetics company she founded that now belongs to her ex. This doesn’t look like an accident. It looks to her like murder, by someone who is not autistic but who knows how to lie convincingly and put the blame on someone else.

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August in Review

Image shows a black and white cat sitting beside someone reading a book, taken from an 1898 poster by Edward Penfield. While it may be the dog days of summer, it’s a good time to read for pleasure, and so we have. This month we’ve been from rural Vermont to rural England, with detours to Norway, Los Angeles, Appalachia, and Provincetown, with stories that ranged from noir to humorous (in the same package). In September we will have books to recommend from old hands like Walter Mosely, Mick Herron, and a rediscovered novella from Elmore Leonard, as well as as debuts of interest. While summer may be coming to a close, it’s never the wrong time to read a good mystery.

Sarah Stewart Taylor, Hunter’s Heart Ridge– ” In this second entry in the series, the small town setting is warmly brought to life, offering both a comforting familiarity and plenty of opportunities for mischief.” Barbara Fister

David Lewis, A Beacon in the Night – “Lewis keeps things real enough to make the fictional situation entirely believable, describes the settings with expertly chosen details to bring them to life, and creates main characters that have intriguing—and believable—contradictions.” Meredith Frazier

Philip Miller, The Diary of Lies – “Without sacrificing the urgency of the story, Miller makes it vivid with odd detours and striking images… a beautifully written, thrilling novel.” Barbara Fister

Joanna Schauffhausen, Gone in the Night – “The fifth book in this series offers a tangled but absorbing plot that can be enjoyed without having read the previous books. There are plenty of twists and surprises throughout the story. However, for those who have followed Annalisa’s previous cases, there’s…a rich tapestry of relationships that will be especially satisfying for regular readers of the series.” Barbara Fister

Deborah O’Connor, Dear Future Me – “The plot takes several detours and there are many red herrings, so that when the resolution comes, it comes as a surprise, but one that makes complete sense. Between the multitude of characters and the complex plot, this was an impressive display of literary control…” Sharon Mensing

Archer Sullivan, The Witch’s Orchard – “Right from the start of her novel The Witch’s Orchard, Archer Sullivan creates a tangible, sensory world that draws the reader in, then adds a twist that throws everything off balance—exactly the type of thing a mystery-lover is looking for…” Meredith Frazier

Katie Collom, Peter Miles Has to Die – “… a compelling story with a noir sensibility flavored with touches of feminism. It turns the standard mystery on its head by having the protagonists take on the role of killer, the mystery being how they will avoid being caught.” Barbara Fister

Johanna Gustawwson and Thomas Enger, Son – “In the first of what promises to be a new series, Son is an intense psychological thriller by two veteran crime writers from France and Norway, collaborating seamlessly.” Barbara Fister

Cate Conte, Claws Out – “Claws Out is Cate Conte’s ninth Cat Café Mystery, and it offers a real change of pace when the setting moves to Provincetown. Catching up on family, friends, and felines makes this another entertaining read as well as a fascinating mystery to solve.” Ruth Casteberry

David Gordon, Behind Sunset – “Behind Sunset is an action-packed crime novel, but most of the action takes place at the expense of its central character, who is repeatedly buffeted, battered and beaten by people and forces that are beyond his control, under circumstances that are often hilarious.” Mary-Jane Oltarzewski

Stig Abell, The Burial Place – ” Jake Jackson’s off-the-grid world is beautifully rendered and ambles in a leisurely way toward a solution. It’s quite a good journey, but you need to be willing to take the scenic route.” Barbara Fister

The Burial Place by Stig Abell

Cover of The Burial Place shows a windblown tree on a hill with a stone wal and cross, with black birds flying up against a red sky. Harper Perennial
Published August 26, 2025
Reviewed by Barbara Fister

Jake Jackson has left a crumbling marriage and a punishing job as a police detective in London to take up residence in an off-the-grid country property left to him by a deceased uncle. He’s leading a very different kind of life, now, a pastoral idyll of rural life, but crime has a way of finding him, even in the tiny community nearby. In this third book in the series, he’s curious about an expansive dig where layers of British history are being slowly unearthed by a collection of professionals, graduate students, and volunteers under the supervision of an archaeologist. A filmographer has been making a series of films about the dig and is thrilled when a valuable horde is discovered some distance from the site. It’s not clear who owns the land its on, and it could make some of the dig participants wealthy. But in the meantime, the group is troubled by a series of threatening letters that protest the very idea of digging up the land, purporting to be from someone anonymous who has taken the name of an Anglo-Saxon leader. Though they ask Jake for advice, no one is sure if the threat is serious – until one of them is killed, poisoned with a chemical they use to clean artifacts.

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