Death at Whitewater Church by Andrea Carter

Death at Whitwater Church: An Inishowen Mystery by Andrea Carter --- 342 pages including Acknowledgments.

The first book in Irish author Andrea Carter's mystery series set in the windswept and rugged far northwest of Ireland has just been published in America.

Solicitor (lawyer) "Ben" O'Keeffe discovers a skeleton in the crypt of a deconsecrated church near Glendara, on the Inishowen peninsula in County Donegal.  The people in Glendara immediately assume these must be the bones of a local man, Conor Deavitt, who went missing six years ago on the very day of his wedding.

But when Sergeant Tom Molloy of the local Garda send the remains for forensic analysis, it turns out it's not Conor Deavitt after all.  Since Ben represents the owners of the church, who are anxious to sell it, she becomes involved in the case, and her curiosity keeps her looking for answers. And more than curiosity, as Ben discovers people are hiding secrets --- and that reminds her of the secrets she is hiding about her own life.

An intriguing mystery, based in part on an actual tragedy from the years of "the Troubles" in Ireland's recent past. Plus evocative descriptions of the stark beauty of Ireland's remote northwest and the self sufficient folk who live there, for those who have been or want to go. The author has already published three additional titles in the series, so hopefully those books will also be published in the U.S.

Click HERE to read an interview with the author from the Irish Times.

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

The Midnight Line by Lee Child

The Midnight Line: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child --- 368 pages

The Midnight Line is the 22nd Jack Reacher thriller from Lee Child, and it may well be the best one he's written to date.  As one reviewer says, this is the one that breaks your heart, as Reacher confronts the true cost of war intersecting with the opioid epidemic.

The new story begins where Make Me (2015) left off. Reacher and Michelle Chang spend three days together in Milwaukee.  On the fourth morning, when he returns to the room with coffee, she's gone. Just a note left on the pillow. And he understands why.

So he gets on a bus and heads west. At a rest stop in a small sad town in Minnesota, Reacher takes a stroll to stretch his legs, He passes a pawn shop and in the window he sees a West Point class ring from 2005. It's tiny; a woman cadet's class ring. Why would she give it up? Reacher's a West Point graduate himself. He knows how hard she worked to earn the right to wear that ring. It's not something you'd let go of easily.

Reacher decides to trace the ring back to its owner. Not just to return the ring, but to make sure she's all right. If she's okay, he'll just walk away.

But the trail he finds leads, step by step, into a web of lies, and violence, and desperation. Eventually it leads Reacher to the desolate wilds of Wyoming and a ghost of a town called Mule Crossing. Where he crosses paths with a retired FBI agent turned private investigator from Chicago. Who knows all about this woman and what might have gone wrong. Reacher has his own kind of honor.  If she's OK, he'll walk away. If she's not - he'll stop at nothing to set things right.

Reacher's on a quest for justice. Don't get in his way.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read the review from the New York Times. 

Click HERE to read the review from the Washington Post.

Sleep Like A Baby by Charlaine Harris

Sleep Like A Baby: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery by Charlaine Harris --- 262 pages

The tenth book in Harris' popular cozy mystery series featuring Lawrenceton GA librarian Aurora "Roe" Teagarden.  Roe is currently on leave from the library as she and her (second) husband, mystery writer Robin Crusoe, welcome their new daughter Sophie.  Parenthood is a new and overwhelming experience for Roe and Robin, neither of whom expected it to ever happen to them.

When Sophie is two months old, Robin has to leave town to attend Bouchercon, the world mystery writers convention, in Nashville TN, where he is one of the authors nominated to win the prestigious Anthony Award for Best Mystery Novel of the year. Unfortunately just at the same time, Roe feels the first symptoms of a cold. Robin says he will cancel his trip, but Roe decides to hire Virginia Mitchell, to come in each night to look after Sophie while Robin is gone. Virginia came to help for a few weeks right after Sophie's birth and Roe knows she is reliable. Roe's much younger half brother Phillip, who lives with them, will also be there to help out before and after school each day.

All goes well at first, which is a good thing, because Roe's cold rapidly reveals itself to be a very bad case of the flu. But on the third night Roe is awakened from a heavy sleep by Sophie's persistent cries. Once she settles the baby, Roe goes looking for Virginia, only to discover the body of a dead woman sprawled in the back yard. Virginia's car is parked out front, but Virginia herself has vanished.

Things become even more complicated when the dead woman turns out to be Tracy Beal, an obsessed fan who had stalked Robin and attacked Roe.  Tracy was supposed to be confined in a mental hospital but managed to escape. Then one of Roe and Robin's neighbors tells the police that he thinks he saw Robin in the back yard that night --- even though Robin can prove that he was in Nashville at the time. Roe decides that she must find out how and why Tracy died and what has happened to Virginia, and whether the two incidents are connected.

This latest book in the longtime series (the first book, Real Murders, was published in 1990) shows just how much Harris has grown as a writer over the intervening 27 years.  Roe and the other characters are more fully realized and believable, and the plots are more complex. Harris has ditched the "Real Murders Club," an awkward plot device in the first few books of the series. And I'm glad to see that in Sleep Like A Baby Roe finally "retires" from the library. Not before time; she was never a very believable librarian, and the Lawrenceton Library was never more than a tired collection of outmoded library stereotypes. 

The Aurora Teagarden Mysteries are also a popular series of made for TV films that debuted in 2015 on the Hallmark Cable Channel, starring Candace Cameron Bure as Roe.

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Into Oblivion by Arnaldur Indridason

Into Oblivion: An Icelandic Thriller by Arnaldur Indridason; translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb --- 345 pages

The eleventh book in Indridason's crime fiction series; this one, like 2015's Reykjavik Nights, is a prequel to the original series, showing us Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson at the start of his career as a detective, and his relationship with his partner and mentor, the enigmatic Marion Briem.

In this book Erlendur and Marion are called in to investigate when the body of a man is found in a remote lagoon formed by the runoff from a geothermal power station. Clearly the man did not drown, but was put into the water after death. Instead his fatal injuries resulted from a fall from an immense height onto a hard surface.  The dead man's clothing leads Marion and Erlendur to suspect a connection with nearby American military base. It's 1979 and the Cold War is at its height. The American presence is unpopular with many Icelanders, There is a thriving black market in American products, including drugs and alcohol, fueling an increase in crime and social problems.

In his spare time Erlendur is also looking into a cold case: a girl gone missing on her way to school 25 years before, and never heard from again. Her parents died not knowing her fate.  For personal reasons, Erlendur is obsessed with this case and others like it; to find answers for those left to endure such painful losses.

Another haunting story from the Iclandic master of Nordic Noir.

Reykjavik Nights by Arnaldur Indridason

Reykjavik Nights: An Inspector Erlendur Novel by Arnaldur Indridason; translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb --- 294 pages

The ninth Inspector Erlendur novel is a prequel, going back in time to 1974 to show us the young Erlendur at the start of his career, assigned to the Traffic Division of the Reykjavik police, working the night shift, dealing with car crashes, robberies, fights, drunks drug addicts and the occasional unnatural death, while respectable citizens are sleeping.

Erlendur is already displaying his stoic, almost anti-social nature, and his talent for dogged, persistent investigation.

On one of the long Northern nights, a homeless drunk Erlendur has encountered on the streets turns up drowned in a waste pond. No one is particularly surprised by Hannibal's death. A respectable married woman named Oddny, walking home from a night out with friends, disappeared the same night. She was trapped in an unhappy marriage; the police suspect suicide, but the case will remain officially open until they find the body.

Only Erlendur, obsessed by the need to discover the truth about those who have lost their way, is driven to pursue his own investigations.

Arnaldur Indridason is a historian, former journalist and film critic, and internationally acclaimed author of the "Nordic Noir" Inspector Erlendur series set in Iceland.

Click HERE to read an interview with author Arnaldur Indridason.

Click HERE to read the review in the New York Times.

Click HERE to read a review from the Crime Fiction Lover web site.  

Strange Shores by Arnaldur Indridason

Strange Shores: An Inspector Erlendur Novel by Arnaldur Indridason --- 296 pages

Arnaldur Indridason is perhaps the best known of Icelandic mystery author of "Nordic Noir" thrillers, with nine of his twelve Inspector Erlendur books translated into English.

Erlendur is a misfit, a dour man whose entire life has been weighed down by guilt over the childhood death of his younger brother, who was lost on the high moors above their remote east Icelandic village during a sudden snowstorm. The two young boys had accompanied their father on a search for some of the family's sheep. All three had become separated from each other during the blizzard. Their father made it back home and raised the alarm; search parties found and rescued Erlendur; but young Beggi vanished, his body never found.

The tragedy destroyed the family. They abandoned the farm and moved to Reykjavik., where his father succumbed to depression. Eventually Erlendur found work as a police officer.

There's an underlying fatalism to all of Erlendur's cases;  many of the crimes he investigates have their roots in the past, when Iceland was a poor, insular country, life was hard and unforgiving, and domestic violence was often covered up. Yet Erlendur understands that kind of crime far better than the crimes of the "new" Iceland, connived at by shady developers and greedy financiers, drug dealers and sex traffickers.  

In Indridason's last novel, Black Skies, Erlendur was referred to but never appeared; he was said to be on leave and visiting his old family croft at Bakkasel. In Strange Shores we read the story of Erlendur's visit there, once again wandering the moors searching for expiation from his guilt.

There he meets an old hunter and hears again the stories of other lives lost during past storms; one, in particular, catches his interest, because it happened very close in time to the loss of his brother.  A young married woman left her home one morning to walk over the mountain pass to visit her mother in the next village; a sudden storm came down on the mountains and she too was never found.

A few years later, the tragedy was completed when her husband, who never remarried, was drowned in a storm while working on a fishing boat. But his body at least was recovered and laid to rest in his village graveyard.

The story catches Erlendur's attention. Even though it all happened more than forty years ago, in his usual obsessive way, Erlendur begins making inquiries, piecing together accounts of what occurred, tracing family members and anyone yet alive who knew the people involved and might still remember details of these events. And he begins to discover discrepancies, as he compares the various accounts, that lead him to suspect something quite different happened. That someone still alive is harboring a guilty secret that has wreaked his life, as Erlendur's guilt has worked on him.

A powerful tale of love and death, revenge and retribution, confession and absolution, very like the ancient Icelandic sagas.

Click HERE to read an interview with Arnaldur Indridason talking about Strange Shores.

How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny

How the Light Gets In: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel by Louise Penny --- 405 pages

It's not often that a murder mystery and tale of political corruption leaves you with tears of joy at the ending, but Louis Penny's Chief Inspector Gamache series is no ordinary mystery series.

This is the eighth book in a series that just keeps getting better. Christmas is approaching but for Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec, the joy of the season is overshadowed by the deadly power struggle going on inside the Sûreté, which he begins to suspect is linked to rampant, longstanding political corruption in the province. When he receives a call for help from an old friend in the small, isolated village of Three Pines, about a guest who has failed to arrive for a holiday visit, he welcomes the chance to escape from the city. But this case is also much more complicated than it appears, for the missing woman was once world famous, although now almost a recluse and mostly forgotten by the public. As the missing pieces of both puzzles fall slowly into place, the Chief Inspector and his last few loyal friends and colleagues need a safe, untraceable refuge. But is even Three Pines remote enough to hold off pursuit while Gamache secures the evidence he needs? Or will the peaceful village and its inhabitants become collateral damage in the final showdown when vengeful enemies close in on Gamache?

Elegant, evocative and pyschologically compelling, Louise Penny is a worthy succesor to mystery writers like Colin Dexter and P.D. James.

Check out Louise Penny's web site at http://www.louisepenny.com/

Three Graves Full; A Novel by Jamie Mason

Three Graves Full; A Novel by Jamie Mason --- 307 pages

First time novelist Jamie Mason presents a picturesque tale, a Southern Noir-Lite thriller.

Mild-mannered Jason Getty has sweat tears of blood for a year over the corpse he buried in his back yard. If ever a homicide was justified, he feels, this was the one, and he's beginning to think he may learn to live with the guilt if that's the price he has to pay for the mistake of befriending Gary Harris.

Until an unhappy accident uncovers the presence of two other corpses on his property --- corpses he had nothing to do with, a totally malicious joke of fate, because it's drawing a lot of police attention just where he least wants or needs it. As Jason jousts with a persistent cop, two strangers entangled in the other murders are headed for a midnight confrontation with the law right in the middle of Jason's frantic effort to remove the incriminatng evidence of his own crime. Dark humor and Southern down home atmosphere combine with the suspense of wondering not who's done what, but who's gonna get away with what was done.