Amy Jordan, The Dark Hours

 

The Dark Hours is the first novel Amy Jordan has published under that name: she previously pubished a crime trilogy in Ireland under the name Amy Cronin. The Dark Hours focuses on a 60-year-old former Garda detective in Ireland long retired from the force and living in seclusion in a rural town. Her reputation as a cop was based on her involvement in a serial kller cases, and after the death in prison of that killer, a murder that echoes his methods happens in Cork, and her former boss persuades her to come back to assist in the investigation (which she does unwillingly). 

     The novel alternates between that 0old case and the new one, with the resentments of more senior officers in the past and the resentment of currently serving detectives in the present case, as well as in both cases the race to catch the killer before more murders occur, and also in both cases, threats to the retired detective. The pace is quick and the stakes are hith, keeping the reader involved in a story that is interesting both for its unusual lead character and for the chase itself.

Sarah Foster, When She Was Gone

 Sara Foster, When She Was Gone

Sara Foster's When She Was Gone is a tense thriller about the abduction of a nanny and two young children in a remote vacation area near Perth,
Australia. We get a terrible hint of what is to come in the first pages, as well as a quick view of the nanny's estranged mother, a former BRitish detective and current activist against domestic violence. The parents of the abducted kids are rich and annoying, and the Aussie cop called back from a leave to take on the case is trying to temper his hyper-dedication to the job in order to save his marriage. kkkkThe complex scenario is handled ably by Foster, and the reader is swept along in the palpable tension of both the plot and the interpersonal relations. Highly recommended.

Two by John Banville in the Quirke series

 Has anaybody been reading the John Banville novels featuring Quirke, the Dublin pathologist in the postwar years (published under the pseudonym Benjamin Black)? Recently, Benville has started putting them out under his own name. Two recent ones, The Lockup and The Drowned are interrelated in an odd way. There is an enigmatic character who flows through both books: that is to say, he's enigmatic in both books unless you read them in order. At the very end of The Lockup, this character reveals himself completely and without compromise. The same is more or less true for The Drowned, but if you did read the end of the first book, you pretty much know that this character is capable of the crime in the second. I actually did read them in reverse order, and for me The Drowned was better without theh spoiler.

Both books feature Quirke's daughhter prominently, as well as her lover, a detective that Quirke despises. In both cases, the coroner is not so much a crime solver as a tangentially involved party to events, hovering around and occasionally offering evidence (for example, in The Lockup, indications that what had thought to be a suicide was in fact murder). Both books are evocative of Irish urban and rural locations, and Banville's style is literary without getting in the way of the story. The "hook" of the first book is the discovery of a young Jewish woman dead in her car, in a closed garage, her car having run until it was out of gas. The second is a less clear case, involving a group of people circling around the odd disappearance of a woman who drives her car into a field, leaving behind her husband as she disappears in the direction of the sea. Two possible suicides, possibly muurders, and both making interesting and involving novels.

Theh Museum Detective, byu Maha Khan Phillips (a crime novel and a mummy-thriller)

 I hadn't seen much new, lately,  that was compelling and innovative, int eh crime fiction field:

but I recently finished The Museum Detective, by Maha Khan Phillips--which is a Pakistan-set archaeology thriller, not quite Indiana Jones but with mummies, counterfeit mummies, murder, corruption, a feminist perspective---apparently the first in a series.

 Based on a true story (though the plot of the novel is entirely fictional), Phillips creates an accomplished archaeologist and feminist who stumbles across the discovery (by police rather than archaeologists) a mummy that will be a scandal either for all those involved in the discovery or for the field of archaeology. That is to say either this mummy is either a gruesome fake or a discovery that will create a seismic shift in ancient history as we know it.

Add to that a personal tragedy that might be connected to the discovery, the corru[t and criminal conspiracies revolving around the mummy, and the determination of the heroine to get to the bottom of the affair regardless of consequences for her, her familyu, and her colleagues--and the result is truly a distinctive p[age-turner in a genre all its own.

Jessa Maxwell, I Need You to Read This

I Need You to Read This, Jessa Maxwell's new novel,  combines several threads of plot, swirling around an advice column in a fictional New York newspaper. One thread concerns a woman who has applied for the job of advice columnist upon the murder of the long-standing incumbent in the job. She has relied on the column in her own life's tumultuous course, but that is her primary qualification, , and is surprised when she is hired for the job. This thread follows her insecurity and imposter symdrome about doing the job, as well as her contacts with a possible suitor and her relationship with a couple of sort-of friends. Another thread follows that tumultuous past, as she becomes involved in an abusive relationship. Another thread follows her own investigation of her predecessors murder, a pursuit that will bring all th thread together in a violent resolution. But there is one more thread, as we follow her in her choice of letters to answer in her column, as well as her heartfelt advice to this correspondents (in the shadow, of course, of her predecessor, her own personal hero).

     The result of all these themes is involving and propulsive, with several major twists that move the whole story forward and keep the reader involved.

Flowers over the Inferno TV series plus Daughter of Ashes (A Teresa Battaglia Novel) by Ilaria Tuti Ekin Oklap (Translator)

 Daughter of Ashes is the third volume of a trilogy by Italian crime \writer Ilaria Tuti, featuring detective Teresa Battaglia, who is suffering from bokth diabetes and the early stages of age-related dementia. The novels are set in and arouond Udine in the far north of Italy, frequently in mountainous areas, and her young and devoted assistant is a prominent feature, along with her other detectives, also devoted to herm and an increasingly hostile boss (I won't go into any details about the boss,m since their back \story is a big part of the novels' development. All the Battaglia books are concerned with both murder and with history, culture, and even folklore of the region. This last in the trilogy is also concerned with some extensive dips into the past of both Battaglia and the Roman history of the area.

The books are compelling and distictive, and the first of them, Flowers over the Inferno, has been made into a TV series by RAI, the Italian national network and it's available with English subtitles (so far onlly on the Australian SBS streaming network, accessible outside Australia with a VPN). The series is very effective in translating the human interactions, especially among the schoolchildren who are a big part of the first novel, and betweenn Battaglia and her young and very attractive assistant Marini (a young Sicilian whose adjustment to the snowy north is a source of some comedy, especially at the beginning).

The crime plots of all three novels are original in concept and in resolution, with the intelligence and wit of Battaglia and the growing confidence of Marini.
It's difficult to describe either version of the series without giving too much away, but I can say that the stories are compellingly told in both media, the novel and the series, and offer an unusual, distinctive experience to both reader and viewer.

John McFetridge, Every City is Every Other City

 John McFetridge is  a Canadian crime fiction writer who published a couple of excellent series set in Toronto (more noir) and Montreal (more police procedural) a few years ago. Quite by accident I recently discovered that since then he has published a stand-alone (maybe?)novel, Every City is Every Other City, set in contemporary Toronto. The title comes from the main character's everyday profession as a scout for locations for movies and TV shows filmed in Toronto (in which the Canadian city and surroundings serves as whatever city or town that the given project is supposed to take place in. His part-tine job though, is private detective, licensed but not too serious about it, usually just taking freelance jobs handed out by the more serious detective agencies around town. But when a colleague asks him to find her missing uncle, he steps into a dangerous morass involving both the missing uncle and a Weinstei-like important man being accused of multiple sexual assaults. 

    The story flips back and forth between the two jobs, offering interesting views inside the film world's not-so-glamorous realities and the gritty real world of police corruption, the power of money, the  lives of ordinary people and one who hopes to rise above the ordinary, a bit-part actress who hopes for the big time but also teaches improv classes at the famous Second City.

    McFetridge's characters talk like real people, and a lot of the story unfolds in dialogue plus the also very natural inner monologue of the main character. Every City is Every Other City is the most enjoyable novel I've read in a long time and I can only hope that the author revisits these characters or introduces us to new ones in the near future.