Crime Fiction Gems for the Gift Season: Best Mysteries

Sometimes I miss a really great book from earlier in the year -- for which I kick myself -- but I lucked out a few weeks ago when one of the Inkshares team asked me to consider A GENTLEMAN'S MURDER by Christopher Huang as a holiday recommendation. The publishing team described it as close to Agatha Christie. But that only applies to the setting (England after World War I). It's actually closer to a Jacqueline Winspear, or a James Benn. If you're not familiar with those crime novelists yet, let's try it this way: If you'd been through a year of front-line service for England in the Great War, made it home safely and with honor, yet found yourself an endless target for racist slurs, even at the exclusive men's club where your family's credentials have made you a member ... would you leap into a crime investigation, to make sure the wrong person doesn't pay the consequences?

Of course you would -- if you're Lieutenant Eric Peterson, "late of the Royal Fusiliers," and your face shows clear evidence of your sophisticated and well-educated mother ... who happened to have been Chinese.

Peterkin's increasing involvement in a murder investigation forces the biases of his time and "class" to be revealed. But even as an "Oriental" by appearance, he's better off that the morphine addict he'll tangle with, or the malicious murderer whose traces can be found, one layer at a time.

Integrity, affection, loyalty to friends and relatives, they're all in this marvelous "amateur sleuth" detection novel. Although this is Huang's debut (via Inkshares), the book is written with both polish and pizzazz, and I already have four people I'd like to give it to, over the holidays. For more on this excellent "Golden Age" mystery, check out Huang's page at Inkshares.

I've already nominated Helene Tursten's dryly entertaining Nordic noir story collection, AN ELDERLY LADY IS UP TO NO GOOD, for "Best Stocking Stuffer." Tursten demonstrates that a tightly spun story, well told, is at least as memorable as a full-length crime novel. I am still marveling at what "Maud" manages to do with the simplest of devices and efforts ... deadly and smart! All you need is to have no compunctions about murder, and you, too, can do what Maud's done. A dandy touch for this book: Soho Press published it as a "tiny" volume that will slip comfortably into a stocking at the mantelpiece, or among the folds of a festive holiday table napkin. Good one! The review is here, if you'd like  more details.

September overflowed with good books hitting publication, and I never quite got around to mentioning Denise Swanson's DIE ME A RIVER. The book belongs in her "Welcome Back to Scumble River" series, and features school psychologist Skye Denison-Boyd (on maternity leave) and her police chief husband Wally. Although it's technically a "cozy" -- small-town setting, amateur sleuth, no gory violence, no need to double-check that the door's locked and windows are secure -- the writing is top notch, the pacing and twists deft and clever, and the finale highly satisfying. Don't worry about any possible spirit presence along the way. Give this to yourself for relaxing between holiday achievements. Or to your best friend, for similar purposes. It's a keeper.

The crime novel that got most deeply under my skin this year was THE NIGHT MARKET by Jonathan Moore. Inspector Ross Carver's effort to investigate a bloody, very gory murder turns into an exposé of how marketing and high technology may easily destroy what we most prize about being human. I plan to re-read this every six months or so, to remind myself why it's so important to keep reading, keep thinking critically, and find the very best storytellers who can open us to our own misconceptions and dangerous dead ends. I have three very close friends who may find a copy among their holiday gifts. Compelling, powerful, well told, and utterly unforgettable. The full review is here.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Edgy San Francisco Mystery, Dystopian, from Jonathan Moore: THE NIGHT MARKET

Wow!

I really liked Jonathan Moore's mystery from last year, The Dark Room. And I figured I'd enjoy the 2018 book, which was already scheduled at that time. But I had no idea what was in store -- THE NIGHT MARKET knocked me breathless.

Fiercely plotted with twists and blade-sharp revelations, wrapped around homicide detective Ross Carver in a San Francisco of the hauntingly near future, THE NIGHT MARKET takes "techno-thriller" to a new height of expert writing and psychological disturbance. I couldn't put it down, and I'm shaken by the suggestions on how Big Money and Big Advertising may already be twisting our culture -- and threatening our lives.

Here's how it starts: Ross Carver and his partner, as the homicide team on duty, answer a call to a home where there's a presumed murder that's just taken place. That is, there's a corpse, and blood -- and the neighbor reported sounds of a frightening disturbance. But when Carver gets into the room with the body, what he sees makes no sense ... a covering of some kind of fungus already engulfing the body. Even less does the next moment make sense, as the FBI bursts onto the scene and drags Carver and his partner out to some kind of biological decontamination rig.

We know that -- but Carver, waking up in his own apartment with a neighbor he's never met taking care of him, has to start from scratch, because his memory has been wiped, and so has his partner's. The messed-up records of where he may have been are enough to suspend him from duty. But the tiny scrap of information left for him -- a fragment from a case he and his partner were supposed to investigate -- turns out to tie him back to the dangerous experiment he seems to have stumbled into.

The trouble is, it looks like organized crime and Very Very Big Money are running a scam in San Francisco -- maybe across the country -- that Carver can't afford to discover if he wants to survive.

Here's a scrap of conversation between Carver and his mysterious neighbor, Mia, who might be on his side. Or not. At any rate, she's ahead of him on figuring out the technology behind the crime scene that he witnessed:

"I didn't know what else to do," Mia said. "I've been sitting here for weeks, waiting. Either to be killed, or for someone to pull me out. And there wasn't any other choice. I  can't do this alone. I don't even know how they got to her, so I have no idea what's safe and what isn't." ...

"Did Johnny Wong kill her?" Carver asked.

"I don't know."

"But you didn't hear that name for the first time from me. You already knew about him, didn't you?" ...

"We finally had a lead," she said. "Years in the dark, and then we thought we had a way in."

"Tell me."

"It's like what they said about J.F.K. You want to know who killed the president? List the world's best marksmen, and then find out which ones were in Dallas. Making these devices would be incredibly hard. We guessed only a few scientists in a few labs could do it."

"So you did your research, and then you made a list."

The closer Carver gets to figuring out the trap he's in, the closer he gets to a very nasty death. Or worse.

I couldn't put this one down, and I know I'll re-read it, tugging at the dangerous truths woven into the page-turning fast-paced plot. I know it took Moore a while to bring this one to publication -- he had to insert at least one other book before it -- and it was worth the wait. He sees it as the finale of a three-book painting of San Francisco: The Poison Artist, The Dark Room, The Night Market. Which of course suggests there won't be a sequel -- I wonder what he'll next bring to dark, vivid life on the pages.

From HMH, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. And do check out Moore's author webpage, here. Last but not least, should I point a finger at the character name, for mystery/suspense fans who know their classics??

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

San Francisco Police Suspense from Jonathan Moore, THE DARK ROOM

A couple of weeks ago, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt released Jonathan Moore's newest crime novel, THE DARK ROOM; there should still be plenty of time to collect a first printing of this powerful and intricately plotted investigation. Moore's third book, The Poison Artist, is also set in San Francisco, that city of fog and back alleys that forms such a powerful backdrop for pain and loss.  In Moore's hands, the city itself is an enabling force -- one that investigators must confront.

In THE DARK ROOM, we meet Gavin Cain, an SFPD homicide investigator. He's in the midst of witnessing an exhumation when a phone call drags him away at top speed: The city's mayor is being blackmailed about what looks like violent and sadistic sex games from his past. And Cain's task is to stop the possible release of dirty information about the mayor, as well as protecting him and his family -- against a very angry blackmailer with a ticking clock.

Complicating the investigation, for Cain, are threads that lead from it toward his own secret: He's become the committed lover of a former crime victim, whose chance at resuming normal life depends on his ability to protect her from further threats. Soon the cases inevitably cross, and the tension ramps up exponentially.

Despite the emotional risks involved, Cain's investigation is at heart a skilled and multipronged one, so that THE DARK ROOM is also an adept police procedural. Here's Cain thinking things through and prioritizing:

Cain stopped at a light on Santa Cruz Avenue, put his phone on his knee, and began to dictate a note to himself. This didn't require any real precision. He just spoke in a free flow of thoughts.

Thrallinex. Benzyldiomide.

Redding thought the drug was the key, and he might be right. In an hour, the ME could tell Cain how it compared to a hypnotic like Rohypnol, what a dozen pills would have done to the girl. Then there was the dress. When it came to high-end fashion, he had no idea where to begin. He'd been wearing the same suit three days running, and knew switching ties and shirts wasn't fooling anyone. But every problem had an entrance. Maybe a clerk in one of the shops around Union Square could poin him in the right direction.

The '84 Cadillac Eldorado was something he might be able to work with, though. No one had to register a dress. Pills got passed from hand to hand. But cops know how to find cars.

It's clear that the city's mayor has a dark past that's made him vulnerable. But it's the present that matters most, and Cain's hampered by the mayor's refusal to open up -- and tangled in the dodgy information that the mayor's family ekes out to him.

Intense pace, taut plotting, an investigator who gambles his own life to save others -- it all adds up to one heck of a good thriller, with a highly satisfying ending. Count this as a little darker than Michael Connelly in terms of plot, and a bit less dark in terms of how haunted the investigator is, but with the same gift of compelling storytelling and, of course, overlapping terrain.

Finally, there's a note from the author that makes it clear THE DARK ROOM is effectively the prequel to another book that Jonathan Moore had already written, called The Night Market. Its publication will follow this one (scheduled for January 2018). Count me among the people who will be preordering a copy.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.