Novels No. 91

 My poor local Branch of the TPL was locked down again for the third or fourth time, with no access to the holds we ordered. Not only does the branch suffer repeat issues with the building that houses it, it was long ago outgrown by neighbourhood density. We understand they have been looking for appropriate new space for some time. When they are able to re-open, it could mean half a dozen holds are waiting for me at the same time! Meanwhile, the in-house library does a yeoman job of producing decent substitutes. 

Kate Quinn. The Briar Club. USA: William Morrow/Harper Collins, 2024.

A fading old brownstone in Washington DC in 1950: owned and operated by grumpy, snoopy Mrs Nilsson, it’s a boarding house for women where Mrs N’s thirteen-year-old son Pete labours after school to her demands. When exuberant Grace March moves into attic room 4B, the strict atmosphere melts every Thursday because Mrs N leaves the house for her bridge game. Grace makes and shares food with all the inhabitants, at the same time opening Pete’s eyes to a world of more freedom. Musician Joe Reiss who plays nearby in the mafia-affiliated Amber Club, is rumoured to be Grace’s lover. Then there’s Nora in 4A who is ardently pursued and bewitched by Xavier, owner of the Amber Club—he ends up on trial for murder.

But with glimpses of the present, 1954, we know someone in the house has been murdered and police are interviewing all the residents. Over the preceding four years, Nora is not the only occupant playing with danger. Reka is an elderly Hungarian artist, planning to steal back the valuables looted from her by a duplicitous politician; Bea wants her place in men’s world of baseball, spurning her FBI suitor; Claire’s clandestine lover is married to a controlling, important public figure; Fliss is the epitome of serene motherhood with daughter Angela, awaiting her doctor husband’s return from military duty; Grace stays quiet about her background. Besides some stunning twists and the most amazing climax I’ve ever enjoyed, the reader is treated to a dozen of the inhabitants’ authentic recipes.

Quinn’s special strength is in lively female friendships and interactions; her research of the post-war, Cold War period is meticulous, as we expect of her. The paranoid effects of McCarthyism, rampant racism, and misogyny in halls of power surround the women even as they break rules and speak up. A killer of an ending.

Random tidbits

▪ “You really think the Russkies won’t invade? The Commies have been making preparations for years.” (25)

▪ “I said at least I wasn’t preaching the sacredness of life while shoving miscarriage tea down my daughter’s throat.” (99)

▪ Wasn’t being old hard enough without having to dredge up a saintly smile when Claire was a bitch and Fliss was annoying and Bea droned about the Red Sox? (124)

▪ “What would you say if I had killed someone?” Reka blurted, half horrified and half fascinated. (154)?

▪ How Grace never got caught was beyond her—two years at Briarwood House and she whisked men in and out past Mrs. Nilsson’s curfew like a sorceress. (167)

▪ She could just sit and know that her baby was all right, that the Briar Club women had closed around Angela in that blessedly breezy, automatic way they always did, passing her from one set of fresh arms to another while Fliss’s arms got a little bloody rest.(176)

▪ Harland was still holding her off her feet as Mickey Mantle took his home run lap and an entire stadium went insane. (243)

▪ “I am in love with a career criminal, and it’s been over for ages but I don’t seem able to entirely get past it,” she said, and hiccuped. (291)

▪ “No, what’s completely mad is staying with that man until he kills you,” Claire cried. “You have to get away.” (316-7)

▪ “She told me I should find someone else to keep my bed warm, too; she wouldn’t mind a bit!” (329)

Emily St. John Mandel. Last Night in Montreal. 2009. USA: Vintage Books, 2015.

Before Mandel produced her bestseller Station Eleven, came this slim novel about leaving. As in not staying. Eli loves Lilia madly, but his fear that she will leave him comes true. Abducted from her Quebec home by her father at the age of seven, her upbringing consisted of car travel across the United States from town to town to avoid police, a few weeks or months in each place, haphazard home-schooling by dad. Knowing they were hunted, Lilia left anguished notes in hotel room Bibles to say leave us alone. This transient lifestyle is imprinted to continue even after her dad settles down; she moves from place to place working menial jobs, sharing casual relationships, voraciously reading in several languages. Suitably, Eli is a linguist, perpetually reworking his thesis about dead languages.

Montreal detective Christopher Graydon, whose daughter Michaela is the same age, is captivated by reported traces and sightings of the girl, dedicating himself to finding her. In time, a postcard from Michaela draws Eli to Montreal, renewing his hope of finding Lilia. Time and chronology are fluid with author Mandel, including her singular aura of surrealism. Teenaged Michaela had been left to fend for herself as her father’s compulsion kept him on the road, following signs of the fugitives. But she’s familiar with his notes of his journey. Eli and Michaela reach an impasse whereby neither is willing to trade secret information; reference to a cryptic accident is a mystery within a mystery. Does each have the answer the other needs? My patience was stretched a little thin waiting endlessly with Eli, night after night, to escort Michaela home from her grimy nightclub job.

Some of the surprise events made me wonder if the characters are all intentionally borderline mental. They have a lot to say about obsession, detachment, language articulation, and the nature of fight and flight. Unsettling, and unsettled.

Scraps

▪ “Try to imagine what it’s like,” she said. “I don’t know how to stay.” (33)

▪ “It’s a city with a probably doomed language. The Québécois are speaking French with an accent so ancient and frankly bizarre that French people from France can’t understand it.” (53)

▪ Stop looking for me. I’m not missing; I do not want to be found. I wish to remain vanishing. Lilia (54)

▪ Lilia said, floundering now, repeating herself, “I’m not arriving anywhere, I’m only leaving somewhere else.” (78)

▪ The time before she left her mother’s house was all closed doors and blind corners; her memories began the night her father appeared on the lawn below her window. (96)

▪ “Keep travelling,” her brother whispered. “You have to stay away, even if you’re in trouble, no matter where you are ...” (102)

▪ “The ironic thing is, I know everything about her life except the one thing that I really want to know. I even know the things she doesn’t.” (139)

▪ He had been travelling alone for thousands of miles, and the only thing he was at all certain of at that moment was that he didn’t want to catch them anymore. (175)

▪ “You’ve been chasing her since we were both eleven years old,” said Michaela relentlessly. She felt giddy and dangerous, slightly drunk, and she couldn’t stop talking although she knew she should. (186)

Novels No. 90

 

Ashley Winstead. This Book Will Bury Me. USA: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., 2025.

Jane Sharp seems to be an ordinary college student who, following the shock of her father’s death, finds solace and purpose in contributing to true crime forums. Unusually, the author places an introductory note to caution readers who might be sensitive because of their own experiences. And Jane begins her story by saying this ‒ hers ‒ is the only true story, unlike sensationalist, false media coverage of her exploits. Upon contributing insights to one forum network, it’s not long before Jane is invited to join four seasoned “armchair detectives”—Citizen, Mistress, Lightly, Goku (their online user names)—as a team. Although living in different places, they get to know each other well; competing forums recognize them as stars. They share insights with police investigators who, in turn, respect them enough to sometimes trade information.

Then came the Delphine, Idaho, murder case: three young women students slashed to death in their sorority house. The crime scene was contaminated even before the small town police arrived to bungle the case from the start. No one seemed close to solving it; an ex-boyfriend and other potential suspects were cleared. As media interest grew to explosive proportions, our Five were regarded as heroes or villains, depending on where their fingers pointed. But whoa! Three more victims are murdered the same way, same town; the FBI takes charge with Agent Hale treating the Five as bonafide consultants. They rent a house in Delphine, where crowds of excited amateur s and a voracious press mob are swarming. A tiny forensic clue intensifies the hunt, building to wild heights. Jane didn’t ask to be co-opted as a heroic figurehead—or expect the herd to turn, critics savaging her.

The hive mind at work is intensely fascinating for crime fiction fans; the culture itself generally serves some public interest, but where do ethics enter? Innocent people could be mistakenly targeted. Did Jane cross a line? The author adds thoughtful sidelights to a very complex tale. If ever a novel was hard to put down, this is it.

Jane’s take, about forum and media initial notions:

Mistress, the knitting grandma murder-solver. Lightly, the jilted ex-cop on his own mission for justice. Goku, the tech genius using his power for good. Citizen, the handsome hero, helping people in and out of uniform. And as for me? Trust me, I was just as surprised as anyone when they painted me as a savant. (92)

Thoughts

▪ I have nothing to hide. If I did, I wouldn’t offer you any of this, wouldn’t rip out my own heart describing my father’s death or how I faltered under the weight of it. (55)

▪ It was my first taste of the phenomenon sleuths call “victim attachment,” what others call a parasocial relationship with the dead. (63)

▪ To the average sleuth, frats were cesspools of toxic masculinity that existed solely to perpetuate old-money power systems, as well as white supremacy and rape culture. (124)

▪ I liked to think of the five of us as rogue scientists. It reminds me that even though we were operating outside the bounds of the establishment, there were still rules. We needed to stay dispassionate and logical. (126)

▪ “The true crime community is a menace,” Chief Reingold insisted, his face now tomato red. “They’re keeping my officers from carrying out justice. They’re condemning people to punishment before a fair trial.” (156)

▪ “Do you hear yourself? Stop working the case for a single second. You threw me to the wolves.” (337)

▪ Deep down, I wanted Citizen to want me, knock on my door for another kiss. (339)

▪ This was exactly what I wanted—proof that my friend was innocent, that the last twenty-four hours of mounting dread could be wiped away. So why did I feel so reluctant? (384)

Clare Leslie Hall. Broken Country. USA: Simon & Schuster, 2025.

Beth Kennedy is farm wife Mrs Frank Johnson, secure in their mutual love, but still painfully recovering from the death of their nine-year-old son Bobby—his cause of death not told us. Small-hold farming is hard work, but Beth, Frank, and his ebullient brother Jimmy can imagine no better life. Into their lives comes an awkward figure from the past: Gabriel Wolfe, now a highly successful fiction writer, returns to his old estate home in the neighbourhood. Years ago, Beth and Gabriel had had a tender but passionate affair that seemed destined forever. Again, we are not told why or how it failed, but Gabriel’s upper-crust mother made known her biting disdain of the country girl. Gabriel has a young son now, Leo, who takes to Beth like a kitten to cream; her obsessive grief over Bobby finds an outlet.

As the story of Beth’s younger self becomes clearer, so does the present—Frank is uncomfortable that she spends so much time with Leo because Gabriel is obviously nearby. How long can Beth deny the yearning she has? Is it possible to love two men wholeheartedly and simultaneously? How aware is she of creating extended collateral damage? Unanswered questions drive the tension toward the biggest mystery: who is the person currently on trial for murdering an unidentified man? Meanwhile, Jimmy marries his vivacious sweetheart Nina to everyone’s satisfaction. But Beth is not the only family member harbouring some guilt as the courtroom trial progresses. I could not agree with the verdict in the way the case was presented.

Well-structured to make the most of suspense, Beth’s story paces evenly, beautifully. With so many dramatic turns, we suspect it can’t end well. In fact, it smacks of Shakespearean tragedy.

Before

▪ We smile, perhaps both thinking the same thing: two would-be writers, two dreamers, two lonely teenagers waiting for their lives to begin. (20)

▪ We lie together, heartbeats fading, wrapped up so tightly in each other’s arms I cannot see his face when Gabriel says, “By the way, I love you. I think I did from the first moment I saw you.” (50)

▪ “It’s starting to feel like we share a brain,” Gabriel says. “How will we integrate ourselves back into the real world?” (58)

▪ “You should go,” he says, and still he doesn’t look at me. “You’re right. This is finished.” (103)

▪ Not Eleanor, who never bothered to hide her distrust of Gabriel on the basis of his being “ ... let’s face it, a bit of an entitled prat.” (197)

After

▪ He’s a boy who misses his mother and I’ve managed to make it worse by showing him how much I miss my son. (133)

▪ Frank can’t often bear it because he’s so steeped in guilt he manages to carry on only by acting as if Bobby never existed. (133)

▪ It’s like Bobby is a ghost everyone has forgotten. And I miss him. I miss him so much. (135)

▪ Frank, who has been attuned to my every mood, who hears the words I don’t say just as much as the ones I do. (197)

▪ And then we’re kissing and it doesn’t even feel wrong, kissing one man, and then another. They are different things. (190)

Novels No. 89

 

Mick Herron. Clown Town. USA: Soho Press, Inc., 2025.

Great excitement here for the new, 9^th Slough House novel! It’s been awhile since Bad Actors (Library Limelights No. 283), so I appreciate the roving tour of the decrepit office building to see the usual suspects. Shirley is as belligerent as ever, Roddy sports a tattoo, Louisa contemplates a real job offer, more recent incomer Ashley Khan is on the self-pity train, and naturally, Catherine Standish holds it all together. River is recovering from near-fatal poisoning, arranging for grandfather David’s library to be catalogued; lo and behold, his girlfriend Sid Baker is back in good form after a long coma (since the first book?!). Regent Park’s (MI5) First Desk Diana Taverner is already surreptitiously requesting a favour from Lamb. And a quartet of retired spooks led by “CC” have acquired ammunition—once hidden by David Cartwright at the height of his career—in order to blackmail Regent’s Park (fools, they).

Oh yes, chaos is about to erupt as Taverner sets her private schemes in motion, at a time when a new government takes over in Britain. Slimy former politician Peter Judd is putting a squeeze on her; Diana bargains with Sid to stop the blackmail to save River’s career; Lamb sets Louisa to find out what River is up to; Sid disappears with the quartet; CC gets a meeting with Diana; Standish endorses a rescue outing by the slow horses. Echoes of past ops like Pitchfork and Waterproof are heard; the ghosts of Min, Marcus, Coe, and Emma Flyte drift momentarily here and there. Did we know Herron discovered a Spook College somewhere in Oxford?

Herron easily transitions from street slang to the poetic, from comedy to insidious social commentary. Is it possible this is the best Slough House book ever? Seems like it as you desperately try to keep up with their manic action. Because every character is compelling, making you care. This addictive series is further enhanced by the brilliant AppleTV episodes that follow, more or less, the order of the books. Seventh heaven for crime fiction fans.

Gems

▪ When Emma died, she’d been wearing Louisa’s coat, and Louisa had never quite rid herself of the notion that the two facts were connected. (71)

▪ “If it was just one of us,” CC said, “a lone wolf, yes, they might try to bury their mess. But four of us? Our ages? They’d be mad to try. It would make a worse stink than what they’re trying to keep under wraps.” (87)

▪ Old spies can grow ridiculous. Old spies aren’t much better than clowns. (127)

▪ He laughed. Diana Taverner telling him not to overthink was like Liz Truss suggesting someone apologise. (140)

▪ River stared at the jottings on his palm, committing them to memory in case he washed his hands by accident. (149)

▪ “Did you really just threaten First Desk?” (159)

▪ “Me, gone? You’re forgetting who you’re talking to. There’s a reason I’m First Desk while you’re still working the bins.” (247)

Lamb-isms

▪ “You look like you found a condom in your cornflakes, Diana. You going to tell me about it or just piss off back to the Park?” (31)

▪ “She implied I looked fat,” said Lamb. “This caused me to feel unsafe.” (54)

▪ “Tell him to undo his seatbelt and head for the nearest concrete wall at eighty-five.” (154)

▪ “And that was a brainstorm, was it? If brains were actual weather, none of you’d get wet.” (193)

▪ “You’ve got a monkey like Judd on your back, you don’t feed it bananas. You find a flamethrower.” (255)

Michael Malone. Uncivil Seasons. TPL download. USA: Sourcebooks, Inc., 1983.

We’re in small town North Carolina where generations of interbred Dollards and Cadmeans comprise the upper level of social order. Other people spend their days pleasing or appeasing their class superiors. Briggs Cadmean owns C&W Textiles, the dominant industry; his extensive family includes a lovely daughter with the same name. Our protagonist Justin (“Jay”) Savile’s solicitous mother Peggy is not the only hilarious character in the novel. Since Jay is one of two town detectives (such a disappointment to his parents), he and his colleague Cuddy Mangum are working on who killed Cloris Dollard—a middle-aged pillar of the community with no enemies—wife of state senator Rowell Dollard, Jay’s maternal uncle. Cuddy is from the other side of town where petty criminals, the Pope boys—Preston, Graham, and Dickey—are persons of interest. In addition, jewellery and other valuables are missing. Cloris’s first husband, Bainton Ames, died years ago in a somewhat suspicious drowning.

The large cast of characters ranges among belligerent or pathetic ex-wives, pontificating elders, sly businessmen, not-so-secret adulterers, a homeless schizophrenic, and such-like. Then there’s Joanna Cadmean, the mystic whose gift helped the police solve many past cases. Author Malone trolls the wealthy uppah classes and their cover-ups of misbehaviour. No wonder Justin drinks. On the one hand, you will laugh out loud. Funniest ever dialogue/banter between Cuddy and Jay. On the other hand, author Malone deeply portrays Justin’s struggles against the family expectations of him. Attempting to nail the killer gives him satisfactory purpose, but places him in danger.

Whether the killer is discovered seems almost irrelevant, Justin’s pursuit is so engrossing—and so annoying to family members. Purpose and sensitivity sustain him in a very complicated, self-serving web of power. Well done, Michael Malone.

Scraps  ... Because this was a download and I was in the midst of travel, the quotes were awkwardly, erratically collected.

▪ I forgot things when I drank. What I forgot first was how frightened my Dollard relatives were that I would start drinking again. (14)

▪ Captain V.D. Fulcher was happy, because he’d heard that Preston Pope had seven placesettings of the Grand Baroque sterling belonging to the Rowell Dollards, and that told him that Preston Pope had murdered Mrs. Dollard, and that told him the case was closed and that the important people in Hillston would think well of him for letting them forget in a hurry that homicides ever happened in Hillston to important people. (48)

▪ “Your trouble is, you’re too domestic. You got too many towels. Sideboards. Relatives. You ever hear of Philip Marlowe’s mother coming to visit him at the office?” (74)

▪ “Leave all this old mess alone, son. Bainton’s dead and gone. And Cloris left her fool house open to trash and trash got in and killed her.” (114)

▪ “Everybody’s got a little shit on their shoes, son. Everybody. People like us don’t track it into the parlor and wipe it on the rugs.” (114)

▪ He meant me to remember I was a Hillston Dollard, blood kin to men of high degree, and I was bound in a circle of courtesy, and I was closely guarded there. (115)

▪ “You are telling me Mrs. Cadmean plotted her suicide to make it look as if you had murdered her?” (210)

Novels No. 88

 

Alina Grabowski. Women and Children First. USA: SJP Lit/Zando, 2024.

One small seaside town. Turn by turn, various residents offer a slice of their lives. They will overlap in revealing a very originally-conceived mystery revolving around the death of high school student Lucy, how others interacted with her. To give an inkling of how it unfolds, I’ll try to whittle down the connecting personalities to a nub but it’s difficult. The residents concerned:

Student Jane is secretly having sex with Rob, the new young maths teacher; Jane’s part-time job co-worker Eric says his cousin Lucy is subject to occasional epileptic seizures. Natalie is visiting from the west coast to see her hospitalized mother; she sees a distraught man called Charlie asking the nurses for Lucy. Layla is the school counsellor to whom Sophie confided that the Coach is a sexual predator. Layla lives with Mona where they hear students partying at a construction site in the woods. Mona is Natalie’s former roommate, hoping for grad school acceptance; Mona and Layla distantly glimpse Marina and Olivia coming from the party in bloody clothing. At the party, student Marina encourages Lucy to revenge herself on a boy who had taken ‒ and posted ‒ a stealthy, naked video of her; only Marina comforts Lucy who suffers a disastrous fall and all the under-age drinkers disappear.

Student Olivia is Principal Cushing’s neglected daughter in favour of sister Lila; at the party she dares Lucy to push the offending boy off a dangerous building. Rae is an aspiring actress working at O’Dooley’s pub where Charlie—Rae’s godfather and Lucy’s father—is a regular; Charlie married Brynn but they’re separated. Maureen is the PTA president whose daughter Emma has made fun of Lucy; Maureen and Layla have issues with the school whitewashing the investigations of Lucy’s death and teacher Rob’s inappropriate conduct; Brynn shows up at the meeting. Student Sophie was Lucy’s BFF; she and Jane become close after the funeral, resolving some relationships in their lives. Brynn is Lucy’s mom, convinced her death was an accident unlike swirling rumours; she comes to terms with the artistic expression of her daughter.

Teenage daughters and mothers! In many cases, absent mothers. Each person here gets full character insights. Do we even know how much parental or sibling drama plays out daily at school, on social media, at home?! Grabowski’s presentation is brilliant, almost dizzying.

Bits

▪ Men love it when you make fun of other men. They think it “keeps them honest,” which is apparently something they can’t do themselves. (6)

▪ The hospital, like all hospitals, seems to have been designed by a coked-out architecture student determined to trap all visitors within its sanitized walls. (49)

▪ I wonder if there’s a correlation between being skinny and uptight. Maybe all that internal clenching makes your metabolism speed up. (130)

▪ “Should you be drinking that?” I ask. “With your medication?” (149)

▪ “Drink, drink, drink!” she shouts while Lucy chugs, and I think about how much more useful she’d be if she ever knew when to shut the fuck up. (149-50)

▪ He just turns on Bruce Springsteen and hums along like maybe we can all pretend that the mirror isn’t busted and Mom isn’t pissed and Coach didn’t touch me and a girl didn’t die and Lila was always, only, one of us. (175-6)

▪ “It’s what you do to everyone else. I have to make Mom and Dad happy to make up for you. And I have to make you happy to make up for Mom and Dad.” (179)

▪ But lately I’ve been thinking it’s not particularly healthy to spend multiple nights a week with my dead best friend’s mom, especially since Lucy’s death has turned Brynn into a kid. (251)

Hannah Deitch. Killer Potential. TPL download. USA: William Morrow, 2025.

Talk about a racing start! Evie Gordon is a tutor paid by wealthy families to prepare their teenagers for the Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT) required for acceptance at American colleges. One day she arrives as usual at Serena Victor’s LA-area home to find both the parents shockingly murdered. Not only that, she finds an emaciated unknown woman tied up in a closet—whom she releases just as Serena appears in hysterics and her boyfriend Lukas arrives. In the confusion and fright, everyone pushing and fighting, Serena falls lifeless to the floor and Lukas is calling the police. Evie senses that she will be blamed for three deaths, grabs the other woman, and hightails it away in her car. Heading east, the strange woman can’t or won’t speak, but she assists in the getaway; they’ve become fugitives wanted for the murders of Peter and Dinah Victor. Evie has a dazed, formless thought of reaching her North Carolina hometown.

This is a journey, in more ways than one. The women are suspicious of each other; they have to buy gas and food without being recognized. Evie works out that her companion had been a kidnapped sex slave for the strange Peter Victor. Slowly they warm up to each other, avidly following the news, hoping police will catch the real killer. Jae finally speaks. To their surprise they hear Serena is recovering; but she may think Evie was the perpetrator. Certainly the media paints them as stone cold killers, and their brutal wayside encounters do nothing to dispel that impression. Jae and Evie begin acknowledging their attraction to each other as they also acquire the scary demeanour attributed to them in the widespread publicity. Evie’s unbridled imagination continually builds fantasies of an alternate life but crossing into Canada is their last hideout together. Events go spinning sideways; hard truths and twists are coming.

A road trip where the tension never lets up, and a psycho-drama of the first order: breathless seems like a good description of an amazing writer’s first novel!

Scraps

▪ I circled her. I felt like someone starving who’d finally stumbled upon some meat. She was roadkill. (62)

▪ Whenever anyone picked a fight with me, I could never resist the bait. I was a stranger to the high road. (78)

▪ We were two brutes, scaly and unyielding, together, and alone. (78)

▪ I’d spent the entire day driving. Nonstop, eagle-eyed surveillance. I couldn’t imagine stepping back into the car, back into the night, a world of cops and US Marshalls, FBI agents and hotel clerks. (120)

▪ It wasn’t me. I didn’t do anything. Why is this happening to me? (151)

▪ A funny thing, how the language of courtship mirrors the language of hunting. Chase. Pursue. Stalk. We had become the object of it all. Objects of lust, objects of fear. (170)

▪ “I just couldn’t stop thinking it was a person. There was a person, living in our walls. Taking food in the middle of the night. Watching me sleep.” (219)

▪ “You had to have known there was another story unspooling, unseen, alongside your own.” (225)

Novels No. 87

 

Kate Quinn. The Rose Code. USA: William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2021.

Bletchley Park, a place of some mythology since the Second World War: where Brit personnel laboured in top secret to decipher intercepted German intelligence, transmitted via their daunting Enigma machines. Quinn gives us amazing detail how the many different “BP” units operated, using her three young women recruits as examples. Osla is a fun-loving upper class deb fluent in German and French; Mabel (call me Mab) is working class with practical secretarial skills. The two become best friends, and lure their landlady’s timid daughter into the service as well. Beth is uneducated and agoraphobic thanks to an abusive mother, reluctant to take part until her excellent grasp of cryptography boosts her confidence. The official secrets act says BP denizens can’t speak to anyone of their work but they can and do socialize; some romantic liaisons are inevitable. Mab seeks husband material while Osla holds a torch for a royal boyfriend.

That doesn’t mean their lives go smoothly or predictably. After months of feverish work and mental exhaustion, Beth triumphs in codebreaking one of Germany’s Enigma machines, prompting her to defy her mother and leave home; the three women happily share lodgings. But London is being pounded by the Blitz; BP people are prone to nervous breakdowns. Tragedy is never far in wartime: bombs and destruction and PTSD, so much loss and grief. D-Day preparations emphasize the necessity of sworn secrecy, more important than the needs of friends and lovers. While we follow their wartime exploits, Quinn deftly contrasts a post-war narrative hinting at a major cataclysm in their friendship. Not only that, Beth is committed to an asylum, convinced that a BP colleague is a traitor. And Osla’s boyfriend prepares to marry Elizabeth Windsor.

This is a long book, 650 pages, packed with people so absorbing I am having night dreams about them. These characters are built from known activities of people of the era; their intense stories merge with true events. Beth’s unit boss Dilly Knox was real. Cameo visits by figures such as Lord Mountbatten, General Montgomery, and Prime Minister Churchill are genuine. The flavour of the Forties permeates flawlessly. Quinn is a magnificent, master storyteller.

Osla

▪ Osla had been called a silly deb enough times for it to sting—a burbling belle, a champagne Shirley, a mindless Mayfair muffin. (21)

▪ Osla looked around, blinking blood out of her lashes, but couldn’t see anything through the splintered darkness but rubble and overturned tables. Humped forms lay along the floor. (132-3)

▪ “Now, Beth—when Mab and I distract your mother, you run out the back while we tell her you’re tucked up in bed with a headache.” (191)

▪ “I’m no princess, Philip,” she said at last. “You’ve already got one.” (462)

Mab

▪ Mab imagined men in headphones listening in on German radio channels, jotting Morse madly), then whirled through the various Bletchley huts so university boys could crack them open, so typing-pool girls like Mab could decode them, so bilingual girls like Osla could translate them. Like a conveyor belt at a factory. (72-3)

▪ Darling Mab, you are and always will be the Girl in the Hat. The girl who makes life worth living. (322)

▪ “You killed them,” Mab rasped. “You let go of Lucy—you let her go, and Francis went tearing off after her—” (393)

▪ I used to decode Nazi battle orders, Mab thought, and now I’m folding napkins into swans. (404)

Beth

▪ Get me out of here, the ciphered message read. You owe me. (56)

▪ “I just told my mother she was a Sunday School bully,” Beth said. (257)

▪ “There’s not much of me left over, Beth. But all of it belongs to you.” (311)

▪ In one day, she’d been stripped of everything: her job, her friends, her oath, her home, her dog, her freedom. (506)

May Cobb. The Hunting Wives. USA: Berkley/Random House, 2021.

Some days, you never know where a book’s blurb might lead you.

Sophie moved her husband Graham and son Jack to a small-ish Texas town to escape big city pace and job pressures, so she could be a housewife. It doesn’t take long to bore her. She knows one friend here, Erin, who also slightly bores her, so she takes to Facebook to scour the community for mutual interests. Sophie becomes fixated on Margot, the leading town socialite, apparently an irreverent kindred spirit. She’s introduced, she’s hooked, and she’s invited to join Margot’s exclusive Friday night gatherings: four women who love to shoot guns and drink wine—Tina, Jill, and Callie are the other forty-somethings. Drinking monumental amounts of any alcohol is the standard as they follow wherever sly Margot leads them at night. Teenage boys are one destination. It’s that distasteful.

The author must be trying to render sympathy or pity for narrator Sophie but my ship sailed on that. With a perfect husband and adorable child, Sophie risks losing them over and over thanks to Margot’s hypnotic hold on her. She castigates herself endlessly, to no avail. Teenage boy’s girlfriend is found shot to death and Sophie is Detective Flynn’s prime suspect. Someone else dies by drowning. After all the sensual adventures and self-berating, finally, a mystery with a rather good twist. Slender story, slender plot, stops short of porn, hardly worth 300 pages of heavy breathing from all involved to reach the end. Charming recipes don’t save it.

Bits

▪ It was so much more than that. I wanted to be near her. For her to notice me, too. The idea of it took my breath away. (36)

▪ My darker urges simply followed me here and are even more amplified because it’s so quiet, and sometimes so boring. (57)

▪ “Margot’s appetite for men is insatiable. You’ll see.” (74)

▪ I promise myself I’ll never do it again. What bothers me, though, is the creeping sense that whenever I’m around Margot, I’m out of control. (109)

▪ I just played freaking spin the bottle with a pair of eighteen-year-olds; this is not who I am. I need to go now, I try to convince myself. (178)

▪ The thought of Graham finding out about Jamie makes me double over, grab the counter, and fight to catch my breath. (207)

▪ I should tell Flynn about the drugging, but I don’t want to get into all of that. (292)

▪ What if Callie was spying at the window watching us, and decides to tell him? (299)

Novels No. 86

 

Martin Cruz Smith. Hotel Ukraine. NYC: Simon & Schuster, 2025.

“The Final Arkady Renko Novel” rings the saddest note because Smith died last month from the same illness he gives his literary detective. Smith’s insights into contemporary Russia are always significant and all the sharper, here, for aligning with the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Arkady, Investigator for the Prosecutor’s office, is tasked with finding who killed Deputy Defense Minister Kazasky, bludgeoned and stabbed in his luxurious Hotel Ukraine suite. Victor is Arkady’s detective partner and friend who supplies the necessary sarcasm as they navigate the chaotic expediencies of Russian bureaucracy—saddled with Marina Makarova, inflexible FSB watchdog and once-girlfriend of Arkady. Building the narrative are two more characters: Arkady’s great love Tatiana, the dauntless journalist exposing Russian lies about the war for American readers; adopted son Zhenya, a tech whiz with the clandestine Black Army, a virtual coalition of Russian and Ukrainian activists against the war.

In a big way, the novel is a window on the current war (the army forbids the word war; it’s a special military operation). When Arkady is suspended from his job for not reporting his Parkinson’s, he decides to follow up on a war crime video Kazasky had hidden and that Zhenya managed to decode. Tatiana is only too happy to accompany him with her cameraman on a secret visit to Bucha, Ukraine, for more evidence. Author Smith doesn’t hold back on how actual events had unfolded there, referred to as the Massacre of Bucha. Lev Volkov is a military contractor whose fictional elite private army—the 1812 Group (think: Wagner mercenaries)—slaughtered civilians there; their atrocities are not attributed to regular soldiers. 1812’s weapons give Arkady the clue he needs to solve Kazasky’s case. But danger lies in every move he makes and almost every word he speaks; beware the tea and the vodka!

I’ve been reading Smith since 1981 (Gorky Park) and this ‒ this ‒ for me is best of all, so valid in its quietly dramatic emotional reach. Anyone with East European family will relate. RIP: awesome author and unique protagonist.

Shards

▪ Moscow murders were overkill, paroxysms of rage and frustration—at life, at fate, at other people—played out with whatever was at hand—vodka and knives, hammers and guns—until the killer’s fury was spent and the victim was dead. (18)

▪ Marina was a woman of steel in a trouser suit, a true believer in the old KGB concept of sword and shield, warrior for and defender of national law, and if she’d yet to meet a means not justified by an end, then Arkady didn’t know about it. (20)

▪ Putin ensured that 1812 received funds and weapons that would and should otherwise have gone to the regular army. (69)

▪ The dull thunk of artillery bombardment, Arkady thought, the age-old Russian way of solving problems. Nothing succeeded like excess. (126-7)

▪ “You must have seen the bodies on your way here. One day we’ll hold a mass for them, the ones whose names we know and the ones we don’t. None of them deserved to die this way.” (160)

▪ “Everyone in Bucha wants the world to see what the Russians have done to them. Stay somewhere safe while you write their story.” (171)

▪ “I’ve spent two decades exposing corrupt leadership and it’s as if nobody cares enough to do anything about it. There’s more corruption now than there’s ever been.” (173)

▪ Arkady had only the vaguest idea what an electronic footprint was, but he still feared that Zhenya was leaving one that was too big, and that sooner or later someone would spot it. (179)

Gillian McAllister. Famous Last Words. USA: William Morrow Large Print (UK: HarperCollins), 2025.

Together for some years and getting used to their nine-month-old baby Polly, Luke and Camilla Deschamps are a well-matched, happy couple. At least Cam thinks so, until one day Luke disappears from her life to become a wanted criminal. Cam is a literary agent which is how she met Luke, who is a published ghostwriter. He’s left only a puzzling note: It’s been so lovely with you both. How can she possibly comprehend that her easygoing husband took three hostages at gunpoint that day, killing two of them in an old warehouse surrounded by cops. Bits of recent uncharacteristic behaviour on Luke’s part drift into her consciousness but she’s not going to tell police for fear they will shoot him. Shocked and bewildered as Cam is, Niall the hostage negotiator is also devastated that his mission failed; if only he hadn’t delayed sending in the cops.

After seven years Niall still has traumatic after-effects; he fixates on finding Luke alive somewhere. It’s time for Cam to have Luke declared dead so she can sell their jointly-owned house. She is still being monitored for any possibility of contact from Luke, though most believe he is dead; the two men he shot were never identified. But Cam is having odd experiences—a feeling of being followed, anonymous emails that say nothing, a brief moment with a woman claiming to be a dead hostage’s wife. Trying to move on in a new relationship with Charlie, is she still in love with Luke, whom she believes is essentially a good man? Is he alive and hiding? Can anything justify his crimes? It feels like Cam and Niall are each spinning their wheels; the same mental reflections over and over become tedious.

If it’s not clear: this novel did not grab me. The entire warehouse siege was painfully slow, in minute-by-minute negotiation decisions and police protocols, lacking suspense. Seven years later, same psychological emphasis with little action until the conclusion that requires total suspension of disbelief.

Cam

▪ Her husband has wiped his laptop. He has lied to her about reporting a crime to the police. (117-8)

▪ She clutches at the skin on her stomach, at her hair. She wants to scream at her broken heart to stop beating. He’s a killer. (159)

▪ Her mind hardened, seven years ago, around a Luke-shaped wound, never to be the same again. (253)

▪ When, when, when will this ever leave her? This grief. This forever invasion of her life. This infamy. (281)

▪ Cam stares at Adam, dumbfounded. “You posted me your book?” she says. “Your crime novel ...?” (439)

Niall

▪ He is interrupted by Maidstone, talking into his radio. “Engage protocol: negotiator to approach the building in two minutes for first contact.” (107)

▪ “That’s my wife!” he shouts. “That’s my wife on the phone! I heard you say her name as you came outside!” (135-6)

▪ And then, over her shoulder, she throws him a single line: “For a hostage negotiator, you are a terrible communicator in marriage.” (232)

▪ “You were right to stall, even if it didn’t work out like you expected. He was not the perpetrator everyone said he was.” (358)

▪ “The man on the dark web—Harry. He told Deschamps he could hide him, if necessary—way back when.” (393)

Novels No. 85

 

John McMahon. Head Cases. NY: Minotaur Books, 2024.

Within the FBI, at least for the author’s purposes, is a small unit called Patterns and Recognition (PAR), bossed by Frank Roberts. Somewhat reminiscent of Slow Horses—agents who’d been transferred, for individual reasons, to a disparaged division—but they want to justify the unit’s existence. The sharpest agent / analyst is Gardner Camden, a man with a finely tuned mind but few social skills. Gard’s partner Cassie is young, flip, and awesome with numbers. Jo (“Shooter”) is the third member, a weapons and hunting expert. Fourth, an earnest new rookie, is Richie who must put up with the badinage of the others. Their strange case initially involves the murders of two known serial killers whose locations had been kept very secret. Both—Ross Tignon in Texas and Barry Fisher in New Mexico—were killed according to the methods they themselves had used after abducting young women. Frank gives the lead to Gardner, but this highly organized killer is always two steps ahead of them.

When he next strikes in San Diego, the killer gets in touch with Gardner, almost taunting him, implying it’s a game of superior intellects. Suspecting he’s familiar with, and has access to, FBI procedures and information, the team finds he’s even able to virtually impersonate FBI Director Banning. They begin to call him Mad Dog, understanding that he’s also a skilled hunter. Following Gardner’s mind as he works at speed to connect the slightest of clues is a treat. But when Mad Dog attacks an unexpected vulnerability, Gardner doesn’t know how to handle the resulting emotion. The plot is far more complicated because the integrity of PAR itself is at stake and Banning may sideline our hero. One might question the extended activity knee-deep in a marsh, presumably in street shoes, but you’re just too busy pulling for the team that needs to counter unforeseen twists.

What a winner! The pace is gripping from the get-go, which means the suspense never lets up. No wasted words here in perfect prose from an author in complete control of his indelible characters. Of course it’s being developed for an online streaming series.

Bits

▪ A snake pit. A border market full of thieves. There were so many less political places to work than the Federal Bureau of Investigation. (33)

▪ We had the ability to synthesize. To see things others couldn’t. To connect disparate elements into one unified story. (79-80)

▪ “Revenge is for people with small brains,” he hissed. “My acts are dictated by my own conscience.” (96)

▪ “He used to tell me that some people don’t take things seriously until they have skin in the game. Maybe that’s what you need, Agent Camden. Something personal, to get your blood pumping.” (97)

▪ I swallowed. I couldn’t control this case. It was evolving in ways that were unpredictable and didn’t follow logic. (139)

▪ “Isn’t that your job, Roberts? To control these ... brilliant freaks who report to you?” (161)

▪ One of the drawbacks of my personality is I struggle with nuance. Fail at sarcasm. (241)

▪ “The level of intelligence you got ... the confidence that comes with how you are ... there’s an arrogance there too. A feeling that knowing something equals solving it. That logic ... equals truth. Those two are not the same, Gardner,” Frank paused. (269-70)

Drew Hayden Taylor. Cold. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2024.

Fabiola Halan is an experienced journalist who flew to a diamond mine in Canada’s north when the ramshackle Cessna crashed enroute—in a bitterly cold, blinding snowstorm. The battered pilot Merle went off in search of help in the isolated area, with survival odds about zero. But Fabiola lived to tell about it in a book that requires promoting, hence her appearance before a university student audience. The Toronto venue is where Professor Elmore Trent lectures about storytelling in the Indigenous Studies program; separated unwillingly from wife Sarah, he’s conducting a discreet affair with Cree student Katie. Aging Anishnawbi hockey player Paul North and his teammates are bedded in student dorms for their latest tournament’s duration. Clearly this university (remarkably like U of T :-) is a device to pull three individuals together at a pivotal point in their lives.

My pleasure with a largely Indigenous perspective came to a rude halt when a young woman’s dead body abruptly appeared, hacked into pieces by, apparently, a paranormal force. With all due respect to Native stories and beliefs, horror freaks me. And yet, there was no such immediate revelation. So I continued, cautiously, because the characters have engaged me. Perhaps restless Fabiola is fated to meet befuddled Paul. Woops, a second body happens, same horror, but worse: Trent actually sees the creature committing the deed. And Trent knows what it is; his residential school childhood failed to erase his rich inheritance of cultural stories. Questioning his sanity, he also knows it’s up to him to vanquish the beast. Will he convince Paul to be his warrior?

More than one metaphor may be applying here as a cold hungry North bears down on the city. Detective Ruby Birch, like us, finds the entire affair mysterious and sometimes perplexing but she’s up for the coming confrontation. I’m all in with the author’s immersive humour.

Fabiola

▪ Shit, she thought. What a place to die. This was not her land. (7)

▪ Her abilities to get things done usually eclipsed the capabilities of those around her. (14)

▪ Fabiola arrogantly thought this Walden-like, living-in-the-bush, being-one-with-nature shit was highly overrated. Any place you couldn’t get decent Greek yogurt should not be allowed to exist. (28)

▪ “I am very good at compartmentalizing my life. All these tragic and potentially debilitating events could be traumatic, but I just put them in their individual rooms that exist in my mind.” (112)

Trent

▪ “They like you. You have something important in you because only special people are allowed to see them.” (107)

▪ Essentially, he was happy with what life threw at him. He was a gatherer, but Sarah wanted a hunter. (158)

▪ What he was seeing he could not possibly be seeing. There in front of him was nothing that nature or any reasonable God could have possibly created. (169)

▪ They were creatures of legend. Metaphors to keep his ancestors in line. Fanciful stories created for cold winter nights. (203)

Paul

▪ In later years, Paul would still remember the sound of snow crunching under her tires as she drove away, and the squeak of the windshield wipers as they battled the remaining snow on her front windows. (92)

▪ “Hockey sticks are our tomahawks. It’s how we do battle today.” (235)

▪ Fascinating was a mild word for her. ... This woman had done so much more with her life than he ever could have imagined for his own. (237)

▪ “But I gotta say, North, I get the feeling you’re on this team because you got no other place to be. And that’s not fair to the rest of the boys.” (254)