Author Caroline Cleveland’s debut mystery novel, “When Cicadas Cry,” fooled me once, then again, then again. And maybe a few more times. Now THAT’S what I call a really good mystery. She wrote in an Afterword that she wanted to supply her readers with plenty of curves and twists. Mission accomplished. I was blindsided by almost all of them.
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New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong isn’t known for her romcoms. In fact, “Finding Mr. Write” is the first one she’s written, and it’s quite different from her usual genres: fantasy, mystery, and horror. While her other novels feature a soupçon of romance, this one is unabashedly filled with lust, romantic tension, insecurity, crossed signals, stupid moves, and of course, the romcom must, an HEA (happy ever after).
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The New York Times bestselling author of “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle,” David Wroblewski, just released the prequel to that tome, “Familiaris,” itself a weighty read at just shy of 1000 pages. As was the case with his debut novel, this second book, sixteen years later, is receiving much acclaim. Like its predecessor, this book was chosen for the prestigious Oprah Book Club. Oprah’s tongue-in-cheek comment to the author when she called to let him know his book was her choice for her book club: “I’m gonna choose it for the summer book club because it’s gonna take people all summer to read it.”
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The summary on the back of Kimberly Belle’s newest thriller, “The Paris Widow,” was enough to get me excited to read it. We learn that Stella and Adam, seemingly the perfect couple, are sightseeing in Europe when, after eating at a small Parisian cafe, Adam runs back to get a pair of forgotten sunglasses, and there is an explosion. Adam is missing, and Stella’s life is turned upside down.
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Amazing, isn’t it. “Dog Day Afternoon” is author David Rosenfelt’s twenty-ninth entry in his Andy Carpenter Mystery series. And I’ve read either twenty-seven or twenty-eight of them. (It’s hard to remember because they appear so quickly one after another, and Rosenfelt is so prolific.) Yet even though the same cast of characters peoples every single mystery, and even though the novels all have the same basic structure, I consistently look forward to reading the next one and then the next one. And I am never disappointed. Every one inspires, or even forces, laugh-out loud responses from its readers. Including me.
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“Swan Song,” according to the third definition in the American Heritage Dictionary, is “A final performance or accomplishment, especially one before retirement.” I can think of no title that would be more appropriate for this, Elin Hilderbrand’s last novel about Nantucket, before her planned retirement from writing. There is also the fact that one of the central characters in the novel, Ed Kapenash, the long-time chief of police, is retiring at the end of the summer during which the event of the novel are set. There are many “swan songs” in this novel, and finding them all, and feeling the sadness that a swan song engenders, is paradoxically an enjoyable experience.
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Melinda Leigh consistently features fascinating female protagonists in her novels, and Bree Taggert, in the eponymous series, is the perfect example of that. She struggles with work life balance just as some of us do, and she cares deeply about both her job and her family. And for Taggert, the “caring for family” part is an accomplishment because she never thought she’d have a family. In “On Her Watch,” the eighth murder mystery in this series, Taggert continues caring for her niece and nephew after the murder of their mother, Taggert’s sister. She had moved to upstate New York to care for the kids and is now the sheriff, working to be seen, heard, and considered to be the woman in charge.
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