The Merchant of Menace The official newsletter of

SLEUTH of Baker Street 907 Millwood Rd., Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M4G 1X2

416-483-3111 e-mail sleuth@SleuthOfBakerStreet.ca

The Merchant of Menace,

Sleuth’s monthly newsletter, is available for download from SleuthOfBakerStreet.ca at no charge. If you’d like the hard copy

mailed to you, it’s $50 a year for the bi-monthly edition.

Postage & Handling

In a word: Actual

Hours of Business

Thursday to Saturday: 10 to 6 Sunday: Noon - 4pm

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday & Statutory Holidays: Closed

We’re often here outside of

business hours, so call and we just might let you in.

Greetings August 2019 Did you read about Shelley, the snapping turtle, who has made a sand trap on the sev-enth hole on Debert Golf Course in Debert, N.S., her home for the second year in a

row? Last year she buried her eggs in the sand trap and three or four of the eggs actual-ly hatched and the toonie-sized babies were helped over to one of the ponds on the

course, where they presumably are living happily. A year goes by and Shelley returns to the same sand trap to lay a new batch of eggs! The sand trap, of course, was out of play for golfers…that’s what I call a win-win for both Shelly and bad sand players!

How about the little racoon who got his head caught in a sewer grate in Newton, MA? A cyclist commuting to work, had spotted the young raccoon, firmly wedged in a sewer grate, its head poking out from one of the small square holes and holding itself up by its paws, called in the authorities. Soap and water didn’t do trick. Wrapping the little guy in medical dressing, to compress his head, didn’t work either. Finally, he was sedated and when he stopped struggling, rescuers were finally able to free it. Apparently, the Newton fire department rescues all their citizens, big and small. Way to go! And have you been reading about people misbehaving in stores? One peed on potatoes in a grocery store? Just squatted over a display and did her thing! One kid licked a

Edison T. Williams

will be at Sleuth Saturday September 14, 2019 from 2 - 4pm

to introduce his 2017 novel, Prickett’s Well ($25),

A Barbados Murder Mystery.

See SleuthofBakerStreet.ca for more about the book and the author.

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 2

tongue depressor in a doctor’s office and put it back in the container? That one seemed to have been egged on by the mother! People opening sealed containers of food or drinks, having a bite or a sip, and putting them back on the shelves? And videoing themselves doing it and putting it up on social media? Although, I think the potato peer was caught on a security cam! What is up with these morons? I’m going to scrutinize anything I buy very, very carefully from now on. And smell the potatoes before I buy them. For sure! Oy vey!

DAVID GORDON’s The Bouncer (#1) ($23.95) was terrific. Tough enough, funny enough, fast paced enough…my kind of read. Made the bus trek from Ottawa a real

breeze! (Well, except for the flat tire and the hour or so that that took to fix. Actually, it turned out to be no big ordeal. I was quite impressed, to be honest, that one guy, with

one truck, could change a tire on a bus. In a parking lot! In fifteen minutes! Without asking everyone to disembark! I doubt I could have manhandled the tire into place by myself’ the sucker was almost as tall as me and probably weighed as much. (No, hon.

You’ve been porking up recently!—Marian). When I related the story to my younger brother, whom I had been visiting, he laughed and said if this had been Punjab Road-

ways all the passengers would have been recruited to help lift the bus. No doubt, the train would have been quicker and more comfortable, but all the cheap seats had been

sold by the time I got around to booking, and the extortionate amount they wanted seemed a tad much. I could have driven, but I’d rather leave the driving to the profes-

sionals. (But I digress.)

This was fun. If you like your crime fiction with a dose of fun, then this “darkly comic, stylish literary thriller”—Associated Press—is for you. Nothing and no one is as expected—from a vial of yellow fragrance to a gangster who moonlights in women's clothes. (Hunh? I don’t remember that part!) Joe Brody is just your average Dostoevsky-reading, Harvard-expelled strip club bouncer who has a high-ly classified military history and whose best friend from Catholic school happens to be head mafioso Gio Caprisi. FBI agent Donna Zamora, the best shot in her class at Quan-tico, is a single mother stuck at a desk manning the hotline. Their storylines intersect over a tip from a cokehead that leads to a crackdown on Gio's strip joint in Queens and Joe's arrest—just one piece of a city-wide sweep aimed at flushing out anyone who might have a lead on the various terrorists whose photos are hanging on the wall under Most Wanted. Outside the jailhouse, the Fed and the bouncer lock eyes, as Gordon launches them both headlong into a nonstop plot that goes from back-road gun show in-tervention to high-stakes perfume heist and manages to touch everyone from the CIA to the Flushing Triads. Beneath it all lurks a sinister criminal mastermind whose manipu-lations could cause chaos on a massively violent scale. This was great fun. And the sequel, Hard Stuff (#2) ($38.95) is on the way. Hopefully, by UPS and not Greyhound. I can’t wait to read it. Last Looks (#1) ($22) by HOWARD MICHAEL GOULD was every bit as much fun as Bouncer was. Sharp, funny, dazzling. There are run-of-the-mill eccentric Californi-ans, and then there's former detective Charlie Waldo. Waldo, a onetime LAPD super-star, now lives in solitude deep in the woods, pathologically committed to owning no more than 100 possessions. He has left behind his career and his girlfriend, Lorena, to pay self-imposed penance for an awful misstep on an old murder case. But the old ghosts are about to come roaring back. And, then there's Alastair Pinch, a onetime Royal Shakespeare Company thespian who now slums it as the "wise" Southern judge on a tacky network show. He's absurdly rich, often belligerent, and typically drunk—a damning combination when Alastair's wife is found dead on their living room floor and he can't remember what happened. Waldo's old flame Lorena, hiding peril of her own, draws him toward the case, and Alastair's greedy network convinces Waldo to take it on. But after such a long time away from both civilization and sleuthing—and plagued by a confounding array of as-

JD’s Picks

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 3

sailants who want him gone—Waldo must navigate complicated webs of ego and deceit to clear Alastair's name... or confirm his guilt. This was good fun. And, even better, Below the Line (#2) ($35), the second Charlie Waldo novel, is due any day! The Line That Held Us ($22) by DAVID JOY is another novel that attracted me. Not because it promised to be that combination of tough and humourous; no, no, quite the contrary. This one promises, and delivers, dark, grit, violence. You see, I happen to like what some call “rural noir” or “Southern noir,” novels set in Appalachia, the Ozarks, Bayou country. It must have been Daniel Woodrell that got me hooked. In this one an accidental death, and the cover-up that follows, sparks a dark series of events that reverberates through the lives of four people who will never be the same again. When Darl Moody went hunting after a monster buck, a kill that could make the difference between meat for the winter and an empty freezer, he never expected he'd ac-cidentally shoot a man digging ginseng. Worse yet, he's killed a Brewer, a family noto-rious for vengeance and violence. With nowhere to turn, Darl calls on the help of the only man he knows will answer, his best friend, Calvin Hooper. But when Dwayne Brewer comes looking for his missing brother and stumbles onto a blood trail leading straight back to Darl and Calvin—and to Calvin's girlfriend, Angie—a nightmare of revenge rips apart their world. This is a story of friendship and family, a tale balanced between destruction and re-demption, where the only hope is to hold on tight, clenching those you love. This was a tough read, but well worth the time. And, finally, a young man walked into the store and we started chatting. He told me he’s a writer and his first book was going to be published soon. We talked, exchanged names of favorite writers and, that was that. Some months later I remember the conver-sation and picked up the novel, Undercard ($19.95) by DAVID ALBERTYN. When Tyron Shaw returns to his hometown of Las Vegas after eleven years in the Ma-rines, he’s surprised to discover that two of his best friends from childhood are all any-one is talking about: Antoine Deco, three years out of prison, hasn’t lost a boxing match since his release, and tonight is fighting in the undercard to the fight of the decade; and Keenan Quinn, a police officer who killed an unarmed teenager and escaped punish-ment from the courts, is the subject of a protest tomorrow morning. Tyron has trouble reconciling either story with his memory of these men, and the situa-tion escalates when he runs into the love of his life, Naomi Wilks, a retired WNBA player, basketball coach, and estranged wife of Keenan. As Tyron reconnects with his old community, he will learn over the next twenty-four hours that much has changed since he left Las Vegas . . . and there is much more that he never understood. Of course, boxing is the backdrop to the story, but loyalty to one’s friends, one’s fami-ly, and one’s community is also an important aspect to the story. K J Howe, author of The Freedom Broker (#1) ($20.49) and Skyjack (#2) ($17.99) had this to say: “...the emotional resonance, well-drawn characters, and seamless prose will keep you reading until well after the final bell. Best debut of the year.” I could not agree more.

I swear I did it for Pixie. I had an air-conditioning unit installed in my cottage and it was not because I could not stand the heat, no, no, it was because my delightful Pix could not. Not central A/C, but not a window shaker either. I tried one of those portable ones last year; you know the kind that you move around the house and you vent the hot air hose out the window? That didn’t work too well! The pump required to get the con-densation that collects inside the unit up and out was defective and I had a mini flood in the cottage. A replacement pump, and another flood. Turns out all the pump units in stock were defective! This new A/C unit is a bit fancier. It’s a split unit, with the blower in the living room of the cottage and the cooling mechanism, outside. I’m hoping, sor-ry, I mean, Pixie is hoping, that the cool air will go through the living room, through the kitchen and then turn the corner and hit the bedroom. I used it for a few hours the other

Marian’s Picks

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 4

day to practice and it seems to work just fine. Now I need the hot, humid weather to re-turn so that my investment can be justified! My cottage hydro bill will be through the roof, but I got worried when I saw Pixie panting through that very hot spell we had a few weeks ago. Time to bite the bullet and make her comfortable. Well, maybe, me too! My cottage neighbours think I’m a wuss getting A/C but funny thing, last week another neighbour had a unit installed in her cottage just like mine. She did it for her cats! I’ve been doing a fair bit of reading over the past month; lots of new books came in that sounded so interesting. I still haven’t been able to finish reading The Polish Detective ($17.99) by HANIA ALLEN, as we are having trouble keeping it in stock, but, finally, we received a goodly number and I have commandeered a copy which I’m taking to the cottage and I’ll get it done. The Book Worm ($22.95) by MITCH SILVER presents us with an hypothesis as to why Hitler turned his sights to Russia and invaded it instead of continuing his bombard-ment of England during the early part of World War II and, ultimately, invading its shores. So why did Hitler choose not to invade England when he had the chance? Two story lines unfold, and each had me reading faster and faster to see where this was all going. Such a believable premise (do we really know why Hitler invaded Russia instead of England?) and I loved reading the story and engaging with the characters. Europe, 1940: It’s late summer and Belgium has been overrun by the German army. Posing as a friar, a British operative talks his way into the monastery at Villers-devant-Orval just before Nazi art thieves plan to sweep through the area and whisk everything of value back to Berlin. But the ersatz man of the cloth is no thief. Instead, that night he adds an old leather Bible to the monastery’s library and then escapes. London, 2017: A construction worker operating a backhoe makes a grisly discovery—a skeletal arm-bone with a rusty handcuff attached to the wrist. Was this the site, as a BBC newsreader speculates, of “a long-forgotten prison, uncharted on any map?” One viewer knows better: it’s all that remains of a courier who died in a V-2 rocket attack. The woman who will put these two disparate events together—and understand the looming tragedy she must hurry to prevent—is Russian historian and former Soviet chess champion Larissa Mendelovg Klimt, “Lara the Bookworm,” to her friends. In the course of the book, Lara learns the significance of six musty Dictaphone cylin-ders recorded after D-Day by Noel Coward—actor, playwright and, secretly, a British agent reporting directly to Winston Churchill. She will understand precisely why that leather Bible, scooped up by the Nazis and deposited on the desk of Adolf Hitler days before he planned to attack Britain, played such a pivotal role in turning his guns to the East. And she will discover the new secret pact negotiated by the current-day nefarious Russian president and his newly elected American counterpart—maverick and dealmaker—and the evil it portends. A highly enjoyable read if you don’t dwell plausi-bility of the premise! Not really a mystery, although there are elements of such, The Bookshop on the Shore ($24.99) by JENNY COLGAN is a delightful, feel good, read. I ordered the “Larger Print” edition of the book by mistake but it’s actually so much easier for me to read than some of that tiny print the publishers use to try and save paper. Constantly worrying about how to pay the rent, keep food on the table and desperate to escape from London, single mother Zoe wants to build a new life for herself and her four-year-old son Hari. But how? Hari’s dad, Jaz, a charismatic but perpetually broke DJ, is no help at all. But his sister Surinder comes to Zoe’s aid, hooking her up with a job as far away from the urban crush as possible: a bookshop (actually, a bookmobile!) on the banks of Loch Ness. And there’s a second job to cover housing: Zoe will be an au pair for three children at a genuine castle in the Scottish Highlands. But while Scotland is everything Zoe dreamed of—clear skies, brisk fresh air, blessed quiet—everything else is a bit of a mess. The Urquart family castle is grand, but crum-bling, the childrens’ single dad is a wreck, and the kids have been kicked out of school and left to their own devices. Zoe has her work cut out for her, and is determined to rise to the challenge, especially when she sees how happily Hari has taken to their new home. With the help of Nina, the friendly local bookseller, Zoe begins to put down roots in the community. Are books, fresh air, and kindness enough to heal this broken family—and her own…? This was such a warm-hearted read, I felt like it wrapped me up in a warm blanket and cuddled me and Pixie close together. And who could resist reading about a

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 5

woman who drives a bus full of books around the Loch Ness area trying to sell them to the locals and the tourists! Non-stop action and more action, Man of War ($10.99) by SEAN PARNELL does not stop. Eric Steele is the best of the best, an Alpha, an operative in a unit known simply as “the Program.” A highly-trained U.S. Special Forces soldier who spent his career fighting radical Islamic militants in Afghanistan, Steele uses a deadly combination of espionage and brute strength to root out his targets and neutralize them. He is in Beirut when a CIA convoy is attacked, and a nuclear weapon stolen. The strategic implications are bad enough, but when he and his colleagues in Washington investigate, it becomes clear that none of this was by chance, the bad guy is a shadowy figure from Steele’s past. Once a valued ally, he is now a formidable enemy who will stop at nothing to rain havoc down on those he believes have wronged him. Lots of weaponry and other tech-nical details—I skimmed over most of that!—and, of course, a healthy suspension of disbelief is required as Steele got himself into and, out of, some nearly impossible situ-ations… but if you like an action thriller with lots of noise, and a high dead body count, then go for this. Sean Parnell certainly uses his combat experience to recreate the adren-aline-fueled excitement and sheer terror of war. Introducing Probationary WPC Trudy Loveday: smart, enthusiastic and always under-estimated, this series is set in Oxford of the 1960s, where there is no internet, no cell phones, virtually no computers, telephone books are used to look up address and just plain old dogged police legwork is the name of the game. And, as the only female on the team, and 19 years old, (as best as I can remember), Trudy gets to make lots of tea. The author, FAITH MARTIN, is prolific—seventeen books in her D.I. Hillary Greene series, and others—but I don’t recall seeing any of them being published over here; maybe I’ve just not looked too hard. Hopefully, with the success of this one, Fatal Ob-session (#1) ($17.99), the first in the Ryder/Loveday series Ms. Martin’s other books will become available here. There are three more titles in this series, with #5 on the way next year. I’d read another one! In the hope of getting her out of the way, Trudy's senior officer assigns her to help cor-oner Clement Ryder as he re-opens the case of a young woman's death. She can't be-lieve her luck, she is actually going to be working on a real murder case. Meanwhile, the rest of the police force are busy investigating a series of threats and murders in the local community, and Clement can't help but feel it's all linked. As Trudy and Clement form an unlikely partnership, are they going to be the ones to solve these crimes before the murderer strikes again? The relationship between the cur-mudgeonly old coroner and enthusiastic young policewoman is terrific. And I suspect it only gets better as the books progress. A Dangerous Man ($37) by ROBERT CRAIS is a winner, but then everything this guy writes is simply terrific. As usual there is nonstop action as Joe Pike and Elvis Cole team up to find a young woman who has been kidnapped…more than once! The story starts with Joe going to the bank—same as anyone else—but that’s where his path and yours diverges. When Isabel Roland, the young teller who helped him, steps out of the bank on her way to lunch, two men abduct her. Good thing Joe is around! He chases them down, and the two men are arrested. But, as you can guess, this is just the begin-ning of the action. After posting bail, the two abductors are murdered, and Izzy disappears. Pike calls on his friend, Elvis Cole, to help learn the truth. What Elvis uncovers is a twisted family story that involves corporate whistleblowing, huge amounts of cash, the Witness Relo-cation Program, and a long string of lies. But what of all that did Izzy know? Is she a perpetrator or a victim? And how far will Joe go to find out? A perfect, fast, summer read. Elvis and Joe make a perfect team. But I’m still hoping we get another Maggie and Scott mystery soon. Please!

BALDACCI, DAVID archer ONE GOOD DEED (#1) ($38) It's 1949. When war vet-eran Aloysius Archer is released from Carderock Prison, he is sent to Poca City on pa-role with a short list of do's and a much longer list of don'ts: do report regularly to his parole officer, don't go to bars, certainly don't drink alcohol, do get a job—and don't ever associate with loose women. The small town quickly proves more com-

Hardbacks

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 6

plicated and dangerous than Archer's years serving in the war or his time in jail. Within a single night, his search for gainful employment--and a stiff drink--leads him to a local bar, where he is hired for what seems like a simple job: to collect a debt owed to a pow-erful local businessman, Hank Pittleman. Soon Archer discovers that recovering the debt won't be so easy. The indebted man has a furious grudge against Hank and refuses to pay; Hank's clever mistress has her own designs on Archer; and both Hank and Archer's stern parole officer, Miss Crabtree, are keeping a sharp eye on him. When a murder takes place right under Archer's nose, police suspicions rise against the ex-convict, and Archer realizes that the crime could send him right back to prison if he doesn't use every skill in his arsenal to track down the real killer. BOWEN, RHYS royals LOVE AND DEATH AMONG THE CHEETAHS (#13) ($35) Georgie and Darcy are finally on their honeymoon in Kenya's Happy Valley, but murder crashes the party. I was so excited when Darcy announced out of the blue that we were flying to Kenya for our extended honeymoon. Darcy finally confides that there have been robberies in London and Paris. It seems the thief was a member of the aris-tocracy and may have fled to Kenya. And one of the leading lights in the community, Lord Cheriton, has the nerve to make a play for me. While I am on my honeymoon! Of course, I put an end to that right off. When he is found bloodied and lifeless along a lonely stretch of road, it appears he fell victim to a lion. But it seems that the Happy Valley community wants to close the case a bit too quickly. Darcy and I soon discover that there is much more than a simple robbery and an animal attack to contend with here in Kenya. CANDLISH, LOUISE THOSE PEOPLE ($35.00) Lowland Way is the suburban dream. The houses are beautiful, the neighbours get along, and the kids play together on weekends. But when Darren and Jodie move into the house on the corner, they donʼt follow the rules. They blast music at all hours, begin an unsightly renovation, and run a used-car business from their yard. It doesn’t take long for an all-out war to start brew-ing. Then, early one Saturday, a horrific death shocks the street. As police search for witnesses, accusations start flying and everyone has something to hide. CASTILLO, LINDA amish SHAMED (#11) ($34.99) The peaceful town of Painters Mill is shattered when an Amish grandmother is brutally murdered on an abandoned farm. When Chief of Police Kate Burkholder arrives on the scene, she learns that the woman’s seven-year-old granddaughter is gone, abducted in plain sight. Kate knows time is against her—the longer the girl is missing, the less likely her safe return be-comes. The girl’s family is a pillar of the Amish community, well-respected by all. But Kate soon realizes they’re keeping secrets—and the sins of their past may be coming back to haunt them. What are they hiding and why? Kate’s investigation brings her to an isolated Old Order Amish settlement along the river, a community where family is everything and tradition is upheld with an iron fist. But the killer is close behind, draw-ing more victims into a twisted game of revenge. Left behind at each new crime scene are cryptic notes that lead Kate to a haunting and tragic secret. What she uncovers threatens to change everything she thought she knew about the family she’s fighting for, the Amish community as a whole—and her own beliefs. CLEVERLY, BARBARA INVITATION TO DIE (#2) ($33.95) Cambridge, 1924 in early summertime. May Balls, punting on the Cam, flirting and dancing the tango are the preoccupations of bright young people, but bright young Detective Inspector John Redfyre finds himself mired in multiple murders. One morning, his dog discovers a corpse neatly laid on a tombstone in the graveyard adjoining St. Bede’s College. An ar-my greatcoat and well-worn boots suggest the dead man may have been a former sol-dier, though the empty bottle of brandy and a card bearing the words “An Invitation to Dine” on the victim ring a discordant note. Even more unsettling is the autopsy, which reveals death by strangulation and unusual contents in the stomach from the man’s last meal. Redfyre learns that this murder is one of several unsolved cases linked to a secre-tive and sinister dining club at St. Bede’s. COES, BEN RUSSIAN ($37.99) Ruthless, clever, and unbelievably violent, the Rus-sian mafia has rapidly taken over the criminal underworld in the U.S. and law enforce-ment has been unable to stem the tide. When a powerful Russian mob family declares war by publicly executing two high-profile American politicians, the message is unmis-takable – opposition will be met with overwhelming deadly force. With no other viable options, the President creates a clandestine assassinations team to find and eliminate the unreachable men running this deadly criminal operation. The CIA recruits two Tier 1 operators – former Navy SEALs Billy Cosgrove and Rob Tacoma. But before they can even get started, the Russians act – murdering Cosgrove in his own home. Now Tacoma is on his own against an organization with endless resources and no boundaries. CONNOLLY, SHEILA victoria KILLER IN THE CARRIAGE HOUSE (#2) ($36.50) After fifteen years away, Kate Hamilton never expected to end up back in her hometown of Asheboro, Maryland full time. And she definitely didn’t expect to be leading the charge of recreating the town as a Victorian village and tourist attraction. But as unexpected as the circumstances are, Kate is ready to tackle them. The town, on

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 7

the other hand, is going to take some convincing. Ever since Henry Barton’s shovel fac-tory closed down, it’s started to seem like there are more tumbleweeds than tourists rolling down Main Street. Kate’s ideas are good, but ambitious—and her friends and neighbors are worried that finding the money for them would push the town even fur-ther into debt. Luckily, Kate and the handsome historian Joshua Wainwright are two very determined people who may have come up with a solution. The Barton mansion, meant to be the centerpiece of the Victorian village, has proven to be a veritable goldmine of documents about the town’s nineteenth-century history, and Kate is con-vinced the papers hide something of value. When a dead body turns up in the town li-brary—mere hours before the documents were meant to arrive there themselves—Kate begins to worry that the papers spell danger instead of dollars. CRAIS, ROBERT cole pike DANGEROUS MAN (#18) ($37) Joe Pike didn't expect to rescue a woman that day. He went to the bank same as anyone goes to the bank and returned to his Jeep. So when Isabel Roland, the lonely young teller who helped him, steps out of the bank on her way to lunch, Joe is on hand when two men abduct her. Joe chases them down, and the two men are arrested. But instead of putting the drama to bed, the arrests are only the beginning of the trouble for Joe and Izzy. After posting bail, the two abductors are murdered and Izzy disappears. Pike calls on his friend, Elvis Cole, to help learn the truth. What Elvis uncovers is a twisted family story that involves corporate whistleblowing, huge amounts of cash, the Witness Relocation Program, and a long line of lies. But what of all that did Izzy know? Is she a perpetrator or a victim? And how far will Joe go to find out? EEKHAUT, GUIDO PURGATORY ($38.99) Walter Eekhaut, the veteran chief in-spector from the Brussels police force who has a problem with authority, remains in Amsterdam, where he was dispatched to aid the Dutch security service. When his boss, Chief Superintendent Alexandra Dewaal, receives a tip from one of her informants, the two find themselves across the border in his home country, tramping in the Belgian Ar-dennes on a frigid January day. What they find is macabre and horrific: seven charred human bodies, attached to tall stakes with chains, in an almost perfect circle. From the look of it, these people were burned alive in some sort of ritual. On the wall of a cabin, Eekhaut and Dewaal find the enigmatic message: "This World seems to last Forever. But it is merely the Dream of a Sleeper." Similar events occur elsewhere in Europe as well as Africa, where Eekhaut's new girlfriend has gone on temporary assignment for an international aid agency operating in Somalia. GREANEY, MARK RED METAL ($36) The Russian bear has awakened. Their tanks race across Poland crushing all opposition on a headlong dash for the heart of Germany. Satellite killing missiles blind American forces while Spetznatz teams destroy Allied communications relays. It's all part of a master plan to confuse and defeat America and her allies. Ranged against the Russian attack are a Marine lieutenant colonel pulled out of a cushy job at the Pentagon and thrown into the fray, a French Special Forces captain and his intelligence operative father, a young Polish female partisan fighter, an A-10 Warthog pilot, and the captain of an American tank platoon who, along with a German sergeant, struggle to keep a small group of American and German tanks in the fight. Operation Red Metal is a nightmare scenario made real but could it just be the first move on the Russian chessboard? HUNTER, STEPHEN bob swagger GAME OF SNIPERS (#11) ($36) When Bob Lee Swagger is approached by a woman who lost a son to war and has spent the years since risking all that she has to find the sniper who pulled the trigger, he knows right away he'll do everything in his power to help her. But what begins as a favor becomes an ob-session, and soon Swagger is back in the action, teaming up with the Mossad, the FBI, and local American law enforcement as he tracks a sniper who is his own equal...and at-tempts to decipher that assassin's ultimate target before it's too late. LIPPMAN, LAURA LADY IN THE LAKE ($33.50) In 1966, Baltimore is a city of secrets that everyone seems to know—everyone, that is, except Madeline “Maddie” Schwartz. Last year, she was a happy, even pampered housewife. This year, she’s bolt-ed from her marriage of almost twenty years, determined to make good on her youthful ambitions to live a passionate, meaningful life. Maddie wants to matter, to leave her mark on a swiftly changing world. Drawing on her own secrets, she helps Baltimore po-lice find a murdered girl—assistance that leads to a job at the city’s afternoon newspa-per, the Star. Working at the newspaper offers Maddie the opportunity to make her name, and she has found just the story to do it: a missing woman whose body was dis-covered in the fountain of a city park lake. MATTHEWS, OWEN BLACK SUN ($35.95) It is the dawn of the 1960s. In order to investigate the gruesome death of a brilliant young physicist, KGB officer Major Alex-ander Vasin must leave Moscow for Arzamas-16, a top-secret research city that does not appear on any map. There he comes up against the brightest, most cutthroat brain trust in Russia who, on the orders of Nikita Khrushchev himself, are building a nuclear weapon with 3,800 times the destructive potential of the Hiroshima bomb. RDS-220 is a project of such vital national importance that, unlike everyone else in the Soviet Un-

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 8

ion, the scientists of Arzamas-16 are free to think and act, live and love as they wish...as long as they complete the project and prove to their capitalist enemies that the USSR now commands the heights of nuclear supremacy. ROSENFELT, DAVID carpenter BARK OF NIGHT (#19) ($37.99) When defense lawyer Andy Carpenter’s veterinarian asks to speak to him privately at the checkup of his golden retriever, Tara, the last thing Andy expects is Truman. Tiny, healthy, French bulldog Truman was dropped off days ago with instructions to be euthanized by a man everyone thought was his owner. But now the owner is nowhere to be found. Andy is furious. Who would want to euthanize a perfectly healthy dog with no explanation? He is willing to whisk Truman away to the Tara Foundation, the dog-rescue organization which is Andy’s true passion. They will find a home for Truman. But that’s not all the vet tells Andy. Thanks to Truman’s chip, it’s discovered that the man wasn’t Truman’s owner at all, Truman's real owner has been murdered. SANSOM, IAN guides SUSSEX MURDER (#5) ($24.99) From Beachy Head to Brighton, and from Chichester to Rye, Flaming Sussex sees our intrepid trio plunge once again into the dark heart of England. At about four o'clock on 5th November 1937, Miss Lizzie Walter, a teacher at the King's Road Primary School in Lewes, said good-bye to her young pupils. The children clattered out into the dark streets, preparing for that night's revelries - and Miss Lizzie Walter was never seen alive again. Fireworks ex-plode and flaming tar barrels are being dragged through the streets. Bonfire Night in Lewes is the closest England comes to Mardis Gras. On the morning after the night be-fore, Sefton goes for a swim in Pells Pool, the oldest freshwater lido in England - in the very centre of Lewes - where he discovers a woman's body. She has drowned. Is it a misadventure or could it be ... murder? Join Morley, Miriam and Sefton on another journey into the dark heart of England. SCOTT, J TODD cherry THIS SIDE OF NIGHT (#3) ($35) In the Mexican border-lands, a busload of student protesters is gunned down in broad daylight, a violent act blamed on the Nemesio cartel. But its aging leader, Fox Uno, sees the attack for what it is: another salvo in the long-running battle for control of Nemesio itself; perhaps by a rival cartel, or maybe someone closer to home. Across the Rio Grande, Sheriff Chris Cherry and his deputies America Reynosa and Danny Ford find themselves caught in Fox Uno's escalating war with the recent discovery of five dead men at the river's edge. But when El Paso DEA agent Joe Garrison's own Nemesio investigation leads him into the heart of the Big Bend, he's not ready to accept the cartel leader's retreat or defeat. Not only does he suspect a high-profile drug task force in a neighbouring county is cor-rupt, he can't shake lingering doubts about the loyalty and motives of the young deputy, Ame Reynosa. And he won't let Sheriff Cherry ignore them either. SILVA, DANIEL allon NEW GIRL (#19) ($35.99 hardcover, $24.99 trade paperback) At an exclusive private school in Switzerland, mystery surrounds the identity of the beautiful raven-haired girl who arrives each morning in a motorcade fit for a head of state. She is said to be the daughter of a wealthy international businessman. In truth, her father is Khalid bin Mohammed, the much-maligned crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Once celebrated for his daring social and religious reforms, he is now reviled for his role in the murder of a dissident journalist. And when his only child is brutally kid-napped, he turns to the one man he can trust to find her before it is too late. Gabriel Al-lon, the legendary chief of Israeli intelligence, has spent most of his life fighting terror-ists, including the murderous jihadists financed by Saudi Arabia. Prince Khalid—or KBM, as he is known—has pledged to finally break the bond between the Kingdom and radical Islam. For that reason alone, Gabriel regards him as a valuable if flawed partner. Together they will become unlikely allies in a deadly secret war for control of the Middle East. The life of a child, and the throne of Saudi Arabia, hang in the bal-ance. Both men have made their share of enemies. And both have everything to lose.

ADLER-OLSEN, JUSSI WASHINGTON DECREE ($23) Sixteen years before Dem-ocratic Senator Bruce Jansen was elected president of the United States, a PR stunt brought together five very different people: fourteen-year-old Dorothy "Doggie" Rog-ers, small-town sheriff T. Perkins, single mother Rosalie Lee, well-known journalist John Bugatti, and the teenage son of one of Jansen's employees, Wesley Barefoot. In spite of their differences, the five remain bonded by their shared experience and devo-tion to their candidate. For Doggie, who worked the campaign trail with Wesley, Jan-sen's election is a personal victory: a job in the White House, proof to her Republican father that she was right to support Jansen, and the rise of an intelligent, clear-headed leader with her same ideals. But the triumph is short-lived: Jansen's pregnant wife is as-sassinated on election night, and the alleged mastermind behind the shooting is none

Paperbacks

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 9

other than Doggie's own father. When Jansen ascends to the White House, he is a changed man, determined to end gun violence by any means necessary. Rights are tak-en away as quickly as weapons. International travel becomes impossible. Checkpoints and roadblocks destroy infrastructure. The media is censored. Militias declare civil war on the government. The country is in chaos, and Jansen's former friends each find themselves fighting a very different battle, for themselves, their rights, their country and, in Doggie's case, the life of her father, who just may be innocent. ALEXANDER, TASHA ashton UNEASY LIES THE CROWN (#13) ($24.50) On her deathbed, Queen Victoria asks to speak privately with trusted agent of the Crown, Colin Hargreaves, and slips him a letter with one last command: Une sanz pluis. Sapere aude. “One and no more. Dare to know.” The year is 1901 and the death of Britain’s longest-reigning monarch has sent the entire British Empire into mourning. But for La-dy Emily and her dashing husband, Colin, the grieving is cut short as another death takes center stage. A body has been found in the Tower of London, posed to look like the murdered medieval king Henry VI. When a second dead man turns up in London's exclusive Berkeley Square, his mutilated remains staged to evoke the violent demise of Edward II, it becomes evident that the mastermind behind the crimes plans to strike again. ALLAN, CLAIRE FORGET ME NOT ($17.99) It's six in the morning during the hot-test summer on record when Elizabeth O'Loughlin, out walking her dog, comes across Clare, a victim of a horrific knife attack, clinging onto life at the side of the road. Clare dies minutes later, but not before whispering her haunting last words to Elizbeth. When it becomes clear that Clare's killer has more than one murder on his mind, Elizabeth has to take drastic action or face losing everything. But what if she can't stop a killer deter-mined never to be forgotten? ATHERTON, NANCY AUNT DIMITY AND THE KING’S RANSOM (#23) ($20) On a dull and dreary October day, Lori Shepherd and her husband Bill set off for the historic town of Rye, on the southeast coast of England, for a quiet weekend together without the kids. Bill must first pay a visit to a reclusive client--but after Lori drops him off, a powerful storm drives her off course and leaves her stranded in an ancient, ram-bling inn called The King's Ransom. When Lori is spooked by ghostly noises in the night, Aunt Dimity reminds her rather tartly that not all ghosts intend to harm the liv-ing. But the longer Lori is stuck at the inn, the stranger things seem. She learns that the inn was once a hangout for smugglers, and that it's riddled with secret tunnels the smugglers used to reach a network of hidden caves. Then there's the inn's cook--a brawny, gruff ex-con--who seems to have a beef with a mysterious French guest. Are the noises Lori hears made by the spirits of long dead smugglers? Or should she be more worried by the inn's living inhabitants? Joining forces with her new friend Bishop Wyndham, and guided by Aunt Dimity's wise counsel, Lori sets out to discover once and for all who--or what--is haunting The King's Ransom. BAGLEY, DESMOND DOMINO ISLAND ($22.99) Mr. Bagley died in 1983 but ob-viously had one more book hidden away! Discovered after more than 40 years, a vin-tage action-adventure novel set on Domino Island – a Caribbean paradise toppling un-der murder, corruption and organised crime. Bill Kemp, an ex-serviceman working in London as an insurance investigator, is sent to the Caribbean to verify a life insurance claim that will make property magnate David Salton's young widow a very rich lady. As Kemp begins to discover that Salton's political ambitions had made him a lot of ene-mies, and that his friends are reluctant to reveal themselves, local tensions around the forthcoming elections spill over into protest and violence on the streets - and murder. Is this all a deliberate smokescreen for an altogether more ambitious plot? And who is the enemy in their midst? As events begin to spiral out of Kemp's control, even his army training seems feeble in the face of such a determined foe. BARKER, J D FIFTH TO DIE ($22.99) Detective Porter and the team have been pulled from the hunt for Anson Bishop, the Four Monkey Killer, by the feds. When the body of a young girl is found beneath the frozen waters of Jackson Park Lagoon, she is quickly identified as Ella Reynolds, missing three weeks. But how did she get there? The lagoon froze months earlier. More baffling? She’s found wearing the clothes of an-other girl, missing less than two days. While the detectives of Chicago Metro try to make sense of the quickly developing case, Porter secretly continues his pursuit of 4MK, knowing the best way to find Bishop is to track down his mother. When the cap-tain finds out about Porter’s activities, he’s suspended, leaving his partners Clair and Nash to continue the search for the new killer alone. Obsessed with catching Bishop, Porter follows a single grainy photograph from Chicago to the streets of New Orleans and stumbles into a world darker than he could have possibly imagined, where he quickly realizes that the only place more frightening than the mind of a serial killer is the mind of the mother from which he came. BELFOURE, CHARLES FALLEN ARCHITECT ($22.99) Someone has to take the blame. When the Britannia Theatre's balcony collapses, killing over a dozen people, the fingers point at the architect. He should have known better, should have made it safer,

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 10

should have done something. Douglas Layton knows the flaw wasn't in his design, but he can't fight a guilty verdict. When he is finally released from prison, he has nothing: no job, no family, nowhere to go. He needs to assume a new identity and rebuild his life. But he soon finds himself digging up the past in a way he never anticipated. If the collapse was not an accident ... who caused it? And why? And what if they find out who he used to be? BONINI & DE CATALDO NIGHT OF ROME ($26.95) Things are changing in Rome. The new Pope, determined to bring radical reform to the Vatican, proclaims an extraordinary Jubilee year, one “of Mercy.” A new center-left government replaces its disgraced predecessor. And with crime lynchpin Samurai in jail, his protégé Sebastiano Laurenti attempts to establish himself as the designated successor. But he must reckon not only with a new generation of enterprising gangsters and racketeers—out to carve for themselves a slice of the profits and opportunities offered by the major public works planned for the Jubilee—but also with ambitious newly elected politician, Chiara Vi-sone. Betrayals, ambushes and infighting will inevitably alter the fragile political bal-ance in the Eternal City. As the sharks circle, some tenuous hope endures in the unlike-ly alliance of an incorruptible politician of the old left and a young bishop who refuses to play the Vatican’s power games. But it remains to be seen whether, in the long night of Rome, there is room for redemption. BOUCHER, ANTHONY ROCKET TO THE MORGUE ($21.95) Legendary science fiction author Fowler Faulkes may be dead, but his creation, the iconic Dr. Derringer, lives on in popular culture. Or, at least, the character would live on if not for Faulkes’s predatory and greedy heir Hilary, who, during his time as the inflexible guardian of the estate, has created countless enemies in the relatively small community of writers of the genre. So when he is stabbed nearly to death in a room with only one door, which no-body was seen entering or exiting, Foulkes suspects a writer. Fearing that the assailant will return, he asks for police protection, and when more potentially fatal encounters follow, it becomes clear to Detective Terry Marshall and his assistant, the inquisitive nun, Sister Ursula, that death awaits Mr. Foulkes around every corner. Now, they’ll have to work overtime to thwart the would-be murderer—a task that requires a deep di-ve into the strange, idiosyncratic world of science fiction in its early days. With charac-ters based heavily on Anthony Boucher’s friends at the Manana Literary Society, in-cluding Robert Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and Jack Parsons, Rocket to the Morgue is both a classic locked room mystery and an enduring portrait of a real-life writing com-munity. Reprinted for the first time in over thirty years, (published originally in 1942), the book is a must-read for fans of mysteries and science fiction alike. BOWEN, GAIL DARKNESS OF THE HEART (#18) ($19.95) When, at the age of sixty, Joanne learns that Douglas Ellard, the reserved general practitioner whom she had grown up believing to be her father was, in fact, the best friend of her biological fa-ther, the brilliant visual artist Desmond Love, she begins to question not just who she is but what factors play a role in shaping all of us and in making us who we really are. Jo-anne is offered the chance to revisit her family history, when writer Roy Brodnitz, au-thor of The Happiest Girl, a Broadway mega-hit inspired by a Desmond Love painting, approaches her with the idea of making a mini-series about the close relationship be-tween the Ellard and Love families. Brodnitz is in town working on the film adaptation of his Broadway hit, and he and his film company soon become a significant presence in the life of Joanne's family, with results that are both life-changing and menacing. When Joanne and Zack's eighteen-year-old daughter, Taylor Shreve, develops a close friendship with the seventeen-year-old actress starring in the movie, the Shreve family is exposed to the dark side of the film industry and they uncover disturbing truths about the handsome and talented people they have invited into their lives. BOWEN, JAMES STREET CAT NAMED BOB ($16.99) When James Bowen found an injured, ginger street cat curled up in the hallway of his sheltered accommodation, he had no idea just how much his life was about to change. James was living hand to mouth on the streets of London and the last thing he needed was a pet. Yet James couldn't resist helping the strikingly intelligent tom cat, whom he quickly christened Bob. He slowly nursed Bob back to health and then sent the cat on his way, imagining he would never see him again. But Bob had other ideas. Soon the two were inseparable and their diverse, comic and occasionally dangerous adventures would transform both their lives, slowly healing the scars of each other's troubled pasts. A Street Cat Named Bob is a moving and uplifting true story that will touch the heart of anyone who reads it. BRUNS, CATHERINE chef PENNE DREADFUL (#1) ($11.50) Local chef Tessa Es-posito is struggling to get back on her feet following her husband's fatal accident. And when the police knock on Tessa's door, things just get worse. They've discovered Dyl-an's death wasn't an accident after all, and they need Tessa to start filling in the blanks. Who would want her beloved husband dead, and why? With the investigation running cold, Tessa decides it's time to save her sanity by reconnecting with her first love-cooking. And maybe the best way back into the kitchen is to infiltrate Dylan's favorite

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 11

local pizza parlor, which also happens to be the last place he was seen before he died. But the anchovies aren't the only thing that stink inside the small family business, and with suspects around every corner, Tessa finds that her husband's many secrets might land her in hot water. BUCKLEY, JULIA tea house DEATH IN A BUDAPEST BUTTERFLY (#1) ($10.99) Hana Keller and her family run Maggie's Tea House, an establishment heavily influenced by the family's Hungarian heritage and specializing in a European-style tra-ditional tea service. But one of the shop's largest draws is Hana's eccentric grandmoth-er, Juliana, renowned for her ability to read the future in the leaves at the bottom of cus-tomers' cups. Lately, however, her readings have become alarmingly ominous and seemingly related to old Hungarian legends. When a guest is poisoned at a tea event, Juliana’s dire predictions appear to have come true. Things are brought to a boil when Hana’s beloved Anna Weatherley butterfly teacup becomes the center of the murder in-vestigation as it carried the poisoned tea. The cup is claimed as evidence by a handsome police detective, and the pretty Tea House is suddenly endangered. Hana and her fami-ly must catch the killer to save their business and bring the beautiful Budapest Butterfly back home where it belongs. BURNSIDE, HEATHER manches BORN BAD (#1) ($22) Brother and sis-ter Peter and Adele Robinson never stood a chance. Brought up by an alcoholic, violent father, and a weak, beaten mother, their childhood in Manchester only prepared them for a life of crime and struggle. But Adele is determined to break the mould. She studies hard at school and, inspired by her beloved grandmother Joyce, she finally makes a suc-cessful life for herself on her own. Peter is not so lucky. Getting more and more im-mersed in the murky world of crime and gangs, his close bonds with Adele gradually loosen until they look set to break altogether. But old habits die hard, and one devastat-ing night, Adele is forced to confront her violent past. Dragged back into her worst nightmares, there's only one person she can turn to when her life is on the line – her brother Peter. After all, blood is thicker than water. BURROWS-JOHNSON, JEANNE PROSPECT FOR MURDER (#1) ($25) Retired travel writer Natalie Seachrist has had visions since childhood. But the sight of a girl's lifeless body draped over a vintage Mustang shatters her personal world when she learns her vision has been prescient. The horrible truth is that her twin's granddaughter Ariel is dead! While the Honolulu Police Department conducts its customary investiga-tion, Natalie decides to move into the Makiki apartment complex where her grandniece died. Aided by her friend Keoni Hewitt, a retired police detective, and her fleet-footed feline companion Miss Una, Natalie begins her very personal on-site sleuthing. She soon discovers the fascinating Shanghai origins of apartment owners Pearl Wong and her sister Jade Bishop…and more than a little discord. Will Natalie be able to solve the riddle of Ariel's death before the police close their investigation without an arrest? Or has Natalie put herself in the way of a killer who's willing to murder again to hide their secret? BURROWS-JOHNSON, JEANNE MURDER ON MOKULUA DRIVE (#2) ($25) A vision of a predawn escape by boat from Denmark seems confusing to Journal-ist Natalie Seachrist. She has no idea how scenes apparently from a World War II mov-ie will impact her modern life in Hawai’i. Soon, she and boyfriend, private investigator Keoni Hewitt, move into the Lanikai cottage she recently inherited. The warm welcome they receive from Miriam Didión and her housemates sets an ideal tone for life in the seaside neighborhood. As Natalie throws Keoni a birthday party everybody, including Natalie’s feline companion Miss Una, have become fast friends. Abruptly, everyone’s life changes when a body is found at Miriam’s home. Eerily, the murder parallels an-other of Natalie’s visions of a scuba diver garroting a woman by moonlight. Natalie re-veals the murderous vision to Keoni’s former partner, Honolulu Police Detective John Dias. Discovery of a suspect’s body on Diamond Head Beach suggests resolution of the crime and Natalie and her new friends relax. But a day of playing tourist devolves and Natalie and her friends are suddenly in the cross hairs of a dangerous adversary. BYTHELL, SHAUN DIARY OF A BOOKSELLER ($23.99) This is a funny and fas-cinating memoir of a year in the life at the helm of The Bookshop, in the small village of Wigtown, Scotland—and of the delightfully odd locals, unusual staff, eccentric cus-tomers, and surreal buying trips that make up his life there as he struggles to build his business . . . and be polite . . . When Bythell first thought of taking over the store, it seemed like a great idea: The Bookshop is Scotland's largest second-hand store, with over one hundred thousand books in a glorious old house with twisting corridors and roaring fireplaces, set in a tiny, beautiful town by the sea. It seemed like a book-lover's paradise . . .Until Bythell did indeed buy the store. In this wry and hilarious diary, he tells us what happened next—the trials and tribulations of being a small businessman; of learning that customers can be, um, eccentric; and of wrangling with his own staff of oddballs (such as ski-suit-wearing, dumpster-diving Nicky). And perhaps none are quirkier than the charmingly cantankerous bookseller Bythell himself turns out to be. But then too there are the buying trips to old estates and auctions, with the thrill of

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 12

discovery, as well as the satisfaction of pressing upon people the books that you love. Sounds just like us at Sleuth! CALDER, EVE cookie house AND THEN THERE WERE CRUMBS (#1) ($10.99) Kate McGuire’s life was sweet in Manhattan before she lost her restaurant job and fian-cé both. But sometimes that’s just the way the cookie crumbles, and soon she finds her-self starting from scratch in the island town of Coral Cay, Florida. It has everything she’s looking for: sunny beaches, friendly locals, and a Help Wanted sign in the bakery shop window. Once she convinces the shop’s crusty owner Sam Hepplewhite to hire her, Kate can’t tie on her apron fast enough. Little does she know that trouble, like warm dough, is on the rise. Stewart Lord is a real estate developer with a taste for a dif-ferent type of dough: the green kind. He knows that he could make a killing by purchas-ing the Cookie House from Sam, who flat-out refuses to sell. But when Stewart turns up the heat on Sam—then turns up dead after eating a fresh batch of Sam’s cinnamon rolls—all eyes focus on the town’s beloved bakery. When the police arrest Sam for murder, Kate must somehow prove that her curmudgeonly boss is innocent. Enlisting the help of a team of lovable locals, Kate sets out to catch the real culprit with his hand in the cookie jar…before someone else gets burned. “I really enjoyed this book” says Marian. CAMPBELL, MICHELE STRANGER ON THE BEACH ($24.99) Caroline Stark’s beach house was supposed to be her crowning achievement: a lavish, expensive space to showcase what she thought was her perfect family. But after a very public fight with her husband, she realizes things may not be as perfect as they seem: her husband is ly-ing to her, the money is disappearing, and there’s a stranger on the beach outside her house. As Caroline’s marriage and her carefully constructed lifestyle begin to collapse around her, she turns to Aidan, the stranger, for comfort…and revenge. After a brief and desperate fling that means nothing to Caroline and everything to him, Aidan’s in-fatuation with Caroline, her family, and her house becomes more and more destructive. But who is manipulating whom in this deadly game of obsession and control? Who will take the blame when someone ends up dead…and what is Caroline hiding? CAPES, BERNARD MYSTERY OF THE SKELETON KEY ($16.99) The Detective Story Club, launched by Collins in 1929, was a clearing house for the best and most in-genious crime stories of the age, chosen by a select committee of experts. Now, almost 90 years later, these books are the classics of the Golden Age, republished at last with the same popular cover designs that appealed to their original readers. The Mystery of the Skeleton Key, first published in 1919, has the distinction of being the first detective novel commissioned and published by Collins, though it was Bernard Capes' only book in the genre, as he died shortly before it was published. This is how the Detective Club announced their edition 10 years later: 'Mr Arnold Bennett, in a recent article, criticised the ad hoc characterisation and human interest in the detective novels of to-day. The Mystery of the Skeleton Key contains, in addition to a clever crime problem and plenty of thrills, a sensible love story, humour, excellent characterisation and strong human in-terest. The scenes are laid in Paris and Hampshire. The story deals with a crime com-mitted in the grounds of a country house and the subsequent efforts of a clever young detective the track down the perpetrator. The Selection Committee of The Detective Story Club have no hesitation in recommending this splendid thriller as one which will satisfy the most exacting reader of detective fiction. CHARLTON, KAREN MURDER IN PARK LANE ($23.95) London, 1812. At a fashionable address in leafy Mayfair, a far cry from Detective Stephen Lavender’s usu-al haunts, a man is found dead in his room. He has been brutally stabbed, but the door is locked from the inside and the weapon is missing. The deceased is David MacAdam, an Essex businessman with expensive tastes. As Lavender and Constable Ned Woods trav-el between London and Chelmsford seeking to understand MacAdam’s final hours and unearth the grisly truth, they uncover a tangled web of deceit behind his stylish facade. The unusual circumstances of MacAdam’s death are nothing compared to the shady na-ture of his life and it seems the house on Park Lane is at the heart of a dark conspiracy. But when a second body turns up, everything they think they’ve learned is thrown into doubt. Can Lavender and Woods find out who’s behind these shocking murders before more lives are ruined? CHARTERIS, LESLIE AVENGING SAINT ($22) Simon Templar is the Saint—daring, dazzling, and just a little disreputable. On the side of the law, but standing out-side it, he dispenses his own brand of justice one criminal at a time. After a fruitless chase across Europe on the tail of his enemy Rayt Marius, the Saint returns to London with a price on his head. But adventure is never far from Simon Templar's door, and soon he finds himself rescuing Sonia Delmar, a munitions heiress, from Marius's clutches. Sonia allies with the Saint—in a bid to prevent Marius and his ally Prince Ru-dolf bringing war and destruction to Europe. CHRISTIE, AGATHA poirot HOLLOW ($18.50) Also titles Murder After Hours, it was originally published in 1946. A far-from-warm welcome greets Hercule Poirot as he arrives for lunch at Lucy Angkatell’s country house. A man lies dying by the swim-

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 13

ming pool, his blood dripping into the water. His wife stands over him, holding a re-volver. As Poirot investigates, he begins to realize that beneath the respectable surface lies a tangle of family secrets and everyone becomes a suspect. COLEMAN, PATRICK CHURCHGOER ($21) A haunting debut literary noir about a former pastor’s search to find a missing woman in the toxic, contradictory underbelly of southern California. In Mark Haines’s former life, he was an evangelical youth pastor, a role model, and a family man—until he abandoned his wife, his daughter, and his be-liefs. Now he’s marking time between sunny days surfing and dark nights working se-curity at an industrial complex. His isolation is broken when Cindy, a charming twenty-two-year old drifter he sees hitchhiking on the Pacific Coast Highway, hustles him for a breakfast and a place to crash—two cynical kindred spirits. Then his co-worker is mur-dered in a robbery gone wrong and Cindy disappears on the same night. Haines knows he should let it go and return to his safe life of solitude. Instead, he’s driven to find out where Cindy went, under stranger and stranger circumstances. Soon Mark is chasing leads, each one taking him back into a world where his old life came crashing down—into the seedier side of southern California’s drug trade and ultimately into the secrets of an Evangelical megachurch where his past and his future are about to converge. Set in the early 2000s. COLGAN, JENNY BOOKSHOP ON THE SHORE larger print ($24.99) “Not really a mystery, but I enjoyed it. It is a fun read”, says Marian. “And I also ordered the ‘larger print’, by mistake but it is so easy to read!”. Desperate to escape from London, single mother Zoe wants to build a new life for herself and her four year old son Hari. She can barely afford the crammed studio apartment on a busy street where shouting football fans keep them awake all night. Hari’s dad, Jaz, a charismatic but perpetually broke DJ, is no help at all. But his sister Surinder comes to Zoe’s aid, hooking her up with a job as far away from the urban crush as possible: a bookshop on the banks of Loch Ness. And there’s a second job to cover housing: Zoe will be an au pair for three children at a gen-uine castle in the Scottish Highlands. But while Scotland is everything Zoe dreamed of—clear skies, brisk fresh air, blessed quiet—everything else is a bit of a mess. The Urquart family castle is grand, but crumbling, the childrens’ single dad is a wreck, and the kids have been kicked out of school and left to their own devices. Zoe has her work cut out for her, and is determined to rise to the challenge, especially when she sees how happily Hari has taken to their new home. With the help of Nina, the friendly local bookseller, Zoe begins to put down roots in the community. Are books, fresh air, and kindness enough to heal this broken family—and her own? COULTER, CATHERINE fbi PARADOX (#22) ($12.99) When an escaped mental patient fails to kidnap five-year-old Sean Savich, agents Sherlock and Savich know they’re in his crosshairs and must find him before he continues with his kill list. Chief Ty Christie of Willicott, Maryland, witnesses a murder at dawn from the deck of her lake cottage. When dragging the lake, the divers find not only find the murder victim but also dozens of bones. Working together with Chief Christie, Savich and Sherlock soon discover a frightening connection between the bones and the escaped psychopath. CRAWFORD, ISIS CATERED CAT WEDDING (#14) ($10.99) Sisters Bernie and Libby Simmons run a catering business in their upstate New York town, and they’re ready and willing to handle any wedding—even one where the bride and groom have tails . . .Susie Katz is known as the crazy cat lady of Longely, New York, and goes out of her way to earn the title, right down to her cat T-shirts and porcelain Hello Kitties. So when she decides to put up a tent on her property and hold an extravagant wedding ceremony for her two Russian blues, she makes sure to include a few two-legged guests. All her favorite enemies will be there: her bird-loving neighbor, a rival cat breeder, a local animal rights activist, and the niece and nephew who stand to inherit her considerable fortune. But chaos erupts when mice jump out of a wedding gift and all the pampered partygoers disappear. Just a few hours later, Susie is stabbed in the back while searching for her missing kitties near the now-empty tent—and it’s up to the Simmons sisters to sniff out the killer. Includes Original Recipes for You to Try! DAHL, ALEX HEART KEEPER ($22) When Alison's beloved daughter Amalie drowns, her world turns impenetrably dark. Alison tries to hold it together throughout the bleak fall, but in the darkest days of the Norwegian winter she completely falls apart. In another family, Amalie's passing is a new beginning. After years of severe health problems, young Kaia receives a new heart on the morning after Amalie drowns. Her mother Iselin has struggled to raise Kaia on her own and now things are finally looking up. She's even made an affluent new friend who's taken a special interest in her and her daughter. Alison knows she shouldn't interfere, but really, she's just trying to help Iselin and Kaia. She can give them the life they never had, and by staying close to them, she can still be with her daughter. Kaia is just like her, and surely, something of Amalie must live on in her. As her grief transforms into a terrifying obsession, Alison won't let anything stop her from getting back what she has lost. DAMHAUG, TORKIL oslo crime FIRERAISER (#3) ($17.99) Oslo Norway. A man obsessed with the cleansing power of fire is destroying everything that reminds him of

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 14

his youth. He calls himself the Fire Man. That same Easter, a teenager is threatened by his girlfriend's tradition-bound family. Karsten's attempts to protect himself put him and his sister Synne at even greater risk. Then he disappears all together. Eight years later, Synne is determined to find out what happened that night. But her investigation will ig-nite smouldering and dangerous memories. And the Fire Man is still there, waiting, and watching her search for the truth at every step... DANIELS, NATALIE TOO CLOSE ($21) Working as a dedicated forensic psychia-trist for many years, Emma is not shocked so easily. Then she is assigned to work with Connie, a wife and mother accused of a despicable crime. Connie is suffering from dis-sociative amnesia—or at least seems to be. Now it is up to Emma to decide whether Connie can stand trial for her sins. But there is something about Connie that inexorably pulls Emma into her orbit. Perhaps it is the way she seems to see right through Emma, speaking to Emma’s deepest insecurities about her life, marriage, and her own tragic past. And soon Emma begins to understand how Connie’s complicated marriage and toxic relationship with her beautiful best friend Ness could have driven Connie to snap—or maybe, she is simply getting too close to a woman who is unforgivable. DAVIDSON, HILARY shadows ONE SMALL SACRIFICE (#1) ($23.95) NYPD de-tective Sheryn Sterling has had her eye on Alex Traynor ever since his friend Cori fell to her death under suspicious circumstances a year ago. Cori’s death was ruled a sui-cide, but Sheryn thinks Alex—a wartime photojournalist suffering from PTSD—got away with murder. When Alex’s fiancée, Emily, a talented and beloved local doctor, suddenly goes missing, Sheryn suspects that Alex is again at the center of a sticky case. Sheryn dislikes loose ends, and Cori’s death had way too many of them. But as Sheryn starts pulling at the threads in this web, her whole theory unravels. Everyone involved remembers the night Cori died differently—and the truth about her death could be the key to solving Emily’s disappearance. DOYLE, ARTHUR CONAN CASEBOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES ($18.99) 'Come at once if convenient - if inconvenient come all the same . . .' The note from Sherlock Holmes to Dr Watson cannot be ignored and soon the pair find themselves in-vestigating the curious case of an aged professor whose sudden strange alteration in be-haviour terrifies everyone from his daughter and her fiancé to the family dog. This and eleven other cases which confound clients or perplex the police are tackled by Holmes and Watson in the final collection of the duo's detecting adventures. DOYLE/GREENBERG, MARTIN H SHERLOCK HOLMES IN AMERICA: 14 ORIGINAL STORIES ($22.99) The world’s greatest sleuth makes his American debut in this ground-breaking collection of never-before-published mystery stories set in the US. The world’s greatest detective and his loyal sidekick Dr. Watson are on their first trip across the Atlantic—to nineteenth-century America! From the bustling neighbor-hoods of New York City and Boston to sinister locales like Salt Lake City and fog-shrouded cities like San Francisco, the beloved British sleuth faces the most cunning criminals America has to offer, while meeting some of her most famous figures along the way, such as Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Houdini. Authors included: Jon L. Breen, Loren D. Estleman, Lyndsay Faye, Victoria Thompson, Bill Crider and more. DOYLE/GRESH, LOIS H SHERLOCK HOLMES VS CTHULHU: THE ADVEN-TURES OF THE INNSMOUTH MUTATIONS ($19.95) The deadly dimensions over London have been sealed, and the monsters have departed. But word has come to Sher-lock Holmes and Dr. Watson of a more terrifying creature still - the great Cthulhu has been sighted off the waters of Innsmouth, Massachusetts. Only Holmes can defeat him. And in the muddy village of Innsmouth, surrounded by villagers who are more sea-monster than human, Holmes meets again his nemesis, Moriarty, and yet greater foes: Amelia Scarcliffe and Maria Fitzgerald, harbingers of Dagon, who have called forth Cthulhu. Their task: to bring about the end of humankind and begin the realm of night-mares on Earth. DOYLE/ROSENSTOCK, MARTIN SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE SIGN OF SEV-EN ($19.95) Sherlock Holmes lives on in this collection of brand-new novellas. Marvel as the master detective scours London's sewers to expose the killer of a mudlark; at-tends a deadly séance that may prove a man's guilt; visits a dark carnival with an unusu-al menu; solves the murder of an Egyptologist's butler; uncovers the shocking secret of a tobacco dealer; sets sail for America to investigate the death of a cult leader and set-tles an old score for his famous associate Inspector Lestrade! Seven Sherlock Holmes adventures from: Stuart Douglas, James Lovegrove, Derrick Belanger, Andrew Lane, David Stuart Davies, Amy Thomas and Lyndsay Faye. ELSBERG, MARC CODE ZERO ($19.99) ZERO, an anonymous activist, has given the world a warning: stop the tech giants before it’s too late. But is anyone listen-ing? Thousands of teenagers are signing up to Freemee, the biggest new social media site, uploading personal information in exchange for advice on what to eat, how to dress, even how to choose their friends. No-one questions what Freemee is doing with all that data. Until hundreds of users begin to take their lives. What will it take to bring down the Freemee mastermind, and who is up to the job?

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 15

FINDER, JOSEPH JUDGMENT ($12.99) It was nothing more than a one-night stand. Juliana Brody, a judge in the Superior Court of Massachusetts, is rumored to be in con-sideration for the federal circuit, maybe someday the highest court in the land. At a con-ference in a Chicago hotel, she meets a gentle, vulnerable man and has an unforgettable night with him—something she’d never done before. They part with an explicit under-standing that this must never happen again. But back home in Boston, Juliana realizes that this was no random encounter. The man from Chicago proves to have an integral role in a case she's presiding over--a sex-discrimination case that's received national at-tention. Juliana discovers that she's been entrapped, her night of infidelity captured on video. Strings are being pulled in high places, a terrifying unfolding conspiracy that will turn her life upside down. But soon it becomes clear that personal humiliation, even the possible destruction of her career, are the least of her concerns, as her own life and the lives of her family are put in mortal jeopardy. In the end, turning the tables on her adversaries will require her to be as ruthless as they are. FORD, G M waterman HEAVY ON THE DEAD (#12) ($23.95) After seven months laying low in Ocean Beach, California, Seattle PI Leo Waterman has finally stopped looking over his shoulder—specifically, for the vengeful band of Washington white su-premacists who blame Leo for blindsiding their big plans for America. Where better to disappear with his bodyguard, Gabe, than this laid-back stretch of San Diego heaven? But when Leo finds a boy’s body on the beach, he comes out of hiding to investigate. That’s when Leo discovers that the victim is not an isolated missing-persons case. It’s the key to something bigger, and it’s leading Leo and Gabe into the dark heart of a hu-man trafficking ring in Mexico. But whatever dangers lay ahead of them, they’re matched threat for threat by what’s coming up from behind. Because the fanatics back home haven’t given up on Leo. Now he and Gabe are caught in the crossfire between two evils. And each one has its own reasons for making sure both men end up dead and buried. Heavy on the dead. FORD, G M waterman WHO IN HELL IS WANDA FUCA (#1) ($22) And just in case you’ve never read any of this series, here’s the first one. When an old gangster friend of Leo's father makes a request he "can't refuse," Leo and his band of drunks, delve into the world of environmental politics in search of Caroline Nobel, a spoiled brat, without the sense God gave a gopher. With the help of "the Boys"—a group of ag-ing winos who are his modern day "Baker Street Irregulars"—Leo fights Native Ameri-can tribal politics, industrial pollution, and psychotic grannies to fulfill his obligation to a friend. FREEMAN, BRIAN easton CROOKED STREET (#3) ($23.95) San Francisco homi-cide detective Frost Easton hadn’t seen his estranged friend Denny in years. Not until he dies in Frost’s arms uttering a final inexplicable word: Lombard. Denny appears to be the latest victim in a string of murders linked by a distinctive clue: the painting of a spiraled snake near the crime scenes. Is it the work of a serial killer? Or is Denny’s death more twisted and personal? To find the answer, Frost reaches into a nest of vi-pers—San Francisco’s shady elite—where the whispered name of Lombard is just one secret. Now, drawn into a cat-and-mouse game with an enemy who knows his every move, Frost finds there is no one he can trust. And somewhere down the crooked streets of the city, Frost’s cunning adversary is coiled and ready to strike again. FRENCH, TANA WITCH ELM ($23) Named a New York Times Notable Book of 2018, and a Best Book of 2018 by NPR, The New York Times Book Review, Ama-zon, The Boston Globe, LitHub, Vulture, Slate, Elle, Vox, and Electric Literature. Toby is a happy-go-lucky charmer who's dodged a scrape at work and is celebrating with friends when the night takes a turn that will change his life - he surprises two burglars who beat him and leave him for dead. Struggling to recover from his injuries, beginning to understand that he might never be the same man again, he takes refuge at his family's ancestral home to care for his dying uncle Hugo. Then a skull is found in the trunk of an elm tree in the garden - and as detectives close in, Toby is forced to face the possi-bility that his past may not be what he has always believed. GAYLIN, ALISON NEVER LOOK BACK ($21) For thirteen days in 1976, teenage murderers April Cooper and Gabriel LeRoy terrorized Southern California's Inland Em-pire, killing a dozen victims before perishing themselves in a fire... or did they? More than 40 years later, twentysomething podcast producer Quentin Garrison blames his troubled upbringing on the murders. And after a shocking message from a source, he has reason to believe April Cooper may still be alive. Meanwhile, New York City film columnist Robin Diamond is coping with rising doubts about her husband and terrifying threats from internet trolls. But that's nothing compared to the outrageous phone call she gets from Quentin... and a brutal home invasion that makes her question everything she ever believed in. Is Robin's beloved mother a mass murderer? Is there anyone she can trust? GIAMBANCO, VALENTINA madison SWEET AFTER DEATH (#4) ($20.49) In the dead of winter, homicide detective Alice Madison is sent to the remote town of Ludlow, Washington, to investigate an unspeakable crime. Together with her partner,

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 16

detective sergeant Kevin Brown, and crime scene investigator Amy Sorensen, Madison must first understand the killer's motives, but the dark mountains that surround Ludlow are the perfect refuge for anyone trying to keep their secrets. When the killer strikes again, the three Seattle police officers find themselves under siege. And as they become targets, Madison and her team realize that in the freezing woods around the pretty town, a cunning evil hungers for their deaths. GILBERT, MICHAEL mercer BODY OF A GIRL (#1) ($22.50) Originally pub-lished in 1972. Detective Chief Inspector Mercer is called to the scene when a skeleton of a girl is found on Westlaugh Island in the upper reaches of the River Thames. What appears to be a straightforward and routine investigation, however, leads to unexpected events and a string of unlikely characters, including a lawyer and a one-armed garage proprietor. Nothing seems to fit together, and it seems the sleepy town holds many se-crets. The finale involves two nights of dramatic violence and it isn’t until this stage is reached that the twisted truth finally emerges. GILBERT, MICHAEL petrella ROLLER-COASTER (#5) ($22.50) Originally pub-lished in 1993. Patrick Petrella has been promoted, but is now installed behind a desk, dealing with a mountain of paperwork on diverse subjects ranging from police race re-lations to allegations of brutality, press harassment and bribery of officers. He is, how-ever, desperate to get out onto the streets again. He is soon taking on one of the more unsavoury and unscrupulous outfits in London and a surprising outcome enables him to map out the direction to take. There is violence, dark-humour and fast action in this gripping story. GOLDENBAUM, SALLY quilt PATCHWORK OF CLUES (#1) ($25) Originally published in 2003. On her morning jog, Portia Paltrow comes upon the dead body of antiques store owner and college professor Owen Hill, sprawled across the back door-step of Selma Parker's fabric and quilt shop on Elderberry Road. The site of their Satur-day morning quilting bee just became a crime scene. Violent crime is rare in the charm-ing village of Crestwood, Kansas, and rumors are soon circulating of a burglary gone wrong. But who would rob a quilt shop? No, Owen Hill has been murdered. Selma and her assistant manager Susan are understandably at loose ends over the crime. So while the tightly knit covey of quilters—who range from a new mother to a wise octogenari-an—work together on a Crystal Pattern quilt for Selma's store's anniversary, they also get busy stitching together a patchwork of clues. But they'd better work fast—before a crafty killer bolts. GOLDENBAUM, SALLY quilt THREAD OF DARKNESS (#2) ($25) Originally published in 2004. As owners of the popular bistro The French Quarter, former New York City restauranteurs Picasso and Laurel St. Pierre are the toast of the town of Crestwood, Kansas. Chef Picasso’s culinary creations delight the women of the quilting club, who have embraced him as a friend. But Laurel’s anti-social behavior confuses Kate Simpson—until she spots Mrs. St. Pierre with another man in what appears to be a lover’s spat. Gossip travels fast in a small town like Crestwood, and rumor has it this is-n’t Laurel’s first indiscretion. She also filed a police report accusing Picasso of domes-tic abuse. And when Laurel’s murdered body is found Picasso is the prime suspect. To prove their friend’s innocence, Kate and the Crestwood Quilters must uncover the se-crets of Laurel’s past—a patchwork history wrapped up in Kate’s own teenage years. GORDON, DAVID BOUNCER ($23.95) Joe Brody is just your average Dostoevsky-reading, Harvard-expelled strip club bouncer who has a highly classified military histo-ry and whose best friend from Catholic school happens to be head mafioso Gio Caprisi. FBI agent Donna Zamora, the best shot in her class at Quantico, is a single mother stuck at a desk manning the hotline. Their storylines intersect over a tip from a cokehead that leads to a crackdown on Gio’s strip joint in Queens and Joe’s arrest—just one piece of a city-wide sweep aimed at flushing out anyone who might have a lead on the various terrorists whose photos are hanging on the wall under Most Wanted. Out-side the jailhouse, the Fed and the bouncer lock eyes, as Gordon launches them both headlong into a nonstop plot that goes from back-road gun show intervention to high-stakes perfume heist and manages to touch everyone from the CIA to the Flushing Tri-ads. GORES, JOE dka DEAD SKIP (#1) ($22.50) Originally published in 1972. In the first book of Joe Gores's razor-sharp Daniel Kearny Associates series, a DKA investigator clings to life after a devastating car crash. The police are ready to write it off as a drunk driving incident, but the DKA team knows it was an attempted homicide. Now they have seventy-two hours to search the backstreets of San Francisco and find the truth about the "accident" from a stripper, an embezzler, an ex-con, and other unsavory char-acters. Gores, a former detective and three-time Edgar Award–winner, spins a gritty, fast-moving tale that mystery lovers can't resist and compares with the best of Hammett and Chandler. This new edition of Dead Skip features a bonus DKA short story, "File #2: Stakeout on Page Street." GOULD, HOWARD MICHAEL LAST LOOKS ($22) There are run-of-the-mill ec-centric Californians, and then there's former detective Charlie Waldo. Waldo, a onetime

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 17

LAPD superstar, now lives in solitude deep in the woods, pathologically committed to owning no more than one hundred possessions. He has left behind his career and his girlfriend, Lorena, to pay self-imposed penance for an awful misstep on an old murder case. But the old ghosts are about to come roaring back. There are plenty of difficult ac-tors in Hollywood, and then there's Alastair Pinch. Alastair is a onetime Royal Shake-speare Company thespian who now slums it as the "wise" Southern judge on a tacky network show. He's absurdly rich, often belligerent, and typically drunk--a damning combination when Alastair's wife is found dead on their living room floor and he can't remember what happened. Waldo's old flame Lorena, hiding peril of her own, draws him toward the case, and Alastair's greedy network convinces Waldo to take it on. But after such a long time away from both civilization and sleuthing--and plagued by a con-founding array of assailants who want him gone--Waldo must navigate complicated webs of ego and deceit to clear Alastair's name . . . or confirm his guilt. GREANEY, MARK gray man MISSION CRITICAL (#8) ($23) Court Gentry's flight on a CIA transport plane is interrupted when a security team brings a hooded man aboard. They want to kick Gentry off the flight but are overruled by CIA headquarters. The mystery man is being transported to England where a joint CIA/MI6 team will in-terrogate him about a mole in Langley. When they land in an isolated airbase in the U.K., they are attacked by a hostile force who kidnaps the prisoner. Only Gentry es-capes. His handlers send him after the attackers, but what can one operative do against a trained team of assassins? A lot, when that operative is the Gray Man. GROSS, ANDREW BUTTON MAN ($13.50) New York, 1930s. Morris, Sol, and Harry Rabishevsky grew up poor and rough on the Lower East Side, until the death of their father forced them to fend for themselves and support the family. Morris, the youngest yet most driven of the brothers, apprentices himself to a garment manufactur-er; bookish Sol drops out of accounting school; and Harry, always the tough one, be-lieves he can help out by learning the ways and means of a charismatic local crime fig-ure. Later, when Morris and Sol find career success and decide to create their own busi-ness, Harry can’t be lured away from the glamour and prestige that comes from being a “button man”—a gun man—for Louis Buchalter, now the most ruthless mobster in the city. When Buchalter sets his sights on the unions that control the garment factories, a fatal showdown becomes inevitable, pitting brother against brother. HARPER, JANE aaron falk FORCE OF NATURE (#2) ($12.99) When five female office workers are forced to go on a corporate retreat in the Australian wilderness, they reluctantly pick up their backpacks and start walking down the muddy path. After all, this retreat is all about taking them out of their comfort zone. It’s supposed to be a bonding experience—one designed to build trust. But it doesn’t work out that way. One of the women never comes out of the woods. And each of her colleagues tells a slightly different story about what happened. Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk has a keen inter-est in the whereabouts of the missing hiker. Alice Russell is the whistleblower in his latest case—and, without her, there’s no way he can win it. Now, in an investigation that takes him deep into isolated bushland, Falk discovers dark secrets lurking in the forest and a tangled web of loyalty, betrayal, and suspicion among the hikers. Still, a question remains: Is Falk on a search-and-rescue mission—or is this a case of murder? HARRIS, SHERRY garage LET’S FAKE A DEAL (#7) ($10.99) As a former mili-tary spouse, Sarah Winston’s learned a little about organizing, packing, and moving. Her latest project sounds promising: a couple of tech-industry hipsters, newly arrived in her Massachusetts town, who need to downsize. Unfortunately, when Sarah tries to sell their stuff, she discovers it’s all stolen—and she’s the unwitting fence. Michelle, an old friend of Sarah’s from the Air Force base, is in line for a promotion—but not everyone is happy about it, and she’s been hit with an anonymous discrimination complaint. When one of the men she suspects is behind the accusations turns up dead in Michelle’s car, Sarah needs to clear Michelle’s name—as well as her own for selling hot merchan-dise. And she’ll have to do it while also organizing a cat lady’s gigantic collection of feline memorabilia, or they’ll be making room for Sarah in a jail cell. HART, ELSA li du CITY OF INK (#3) ($25.99) Following the enthralling 18th centu-ry Chinese mysteries Jade Dragon Mountain and White Mirror, comes the next Li Du adventure. Li Du was prepared to travel anywhere in the world except for one place: home. But to unravel the mystery that surrounds his mentor’s execution, that’s exactly where he must go. Plunged into the painful memories and teeming streets of Beijing, Li Du obtains a humble clerkship that offers anonymity and access to the records he needs. He is beginning to make progress when his search for answers buried in the past is in-terrupted by murder in the present. The wife of a local factory owner is found dead, along with a man who appears to have been her lover, and the most likely suspect is the husband. But what Li Du’s superiors at the North Borough Office are willing to accept as a crime of passion strikes Li Du as something more calculated. As past and present intertwine, Li Du’s investigations reveal that many of Beijing’s residents — foreign and Chinese, artisan and official, scholar and soldier — have secrets they would kill to pro-tect.

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 18

HECHTMAN, BETTY crochet ON THE HOOK (#12) ($23.95) Molly Pink and the Tarzana Hookers are busy crocheting baby blankets for charity, but before long, they’re tangled up in a mystery that may be their unraveling. The Hookers are a tight-knit group, but some of the members harbor secret aspirations. Adele dreams of becoming an actress, and her acting coach has filled her head with promises of a career as a cro-chet show host. Elise Belmont has earned her real estate license and is itching to show her first house. But when the house’s tenant turns up dead from a pink squirrel cocktail laced with cyanide, the Hookers could be in double treble. It turns out that the dead man was Adele’s acting coach, Timothy Clark. And Molly gets wound up in the case after accidentally leaving a scarf she designed at the murder scene. Detective Barry Green-berg, one of Molly’s exes, quickly stitches together that the scarf is hers. Lawyer Ma-son Fields (another of Molly’s exes) has her head swimming in legalese. For Molly, the only way out is by learning who really killed Timothy, and why. Crochet patterns and a delicious recipe included! HILL, EDWIN thursby LITTLE COMFORT (#1) ($12.99) Harvard librarian Hester Thursby knows that even in the digital age, people still need help finding things. Using her research skills, Hester runs a side business tracking down the lost. Her new case is finding the handsome and charismatic Sam Blaine. But Sam has no desire to be found. As a teenager, Sam fled his small New Hampshire town with his friend, Gabe, after a haunting incident. For a dozen years, Sam and Gabe have traveled the country, reinventing themselves as they move from one mark to another. Sam has learned how trusting wealthy people can be—especially the lonely ones—as he expertly manipulates his way into their lives and homes. In Wendy Richards, the beautiful, fabulously rich daughter of one of Boston’s most influential families, he’s found the perfect way to in-filtrate the milieu in which he knows he belongs—a world of Brooks Brothers suits, Nantucket summers, and effortless glamour. As Hester’s investigation closes in on their brutal truth, the bond between Sam and Gabe is tested and Hester unknowingly jeopard-izes her own safety HIX, AIMEE willa pennington WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU (#1) ($22) A favour for a friend turns into a murder investigation, drawing apprentice PI Willa Pennington into a labyrinth of lies and deception in the shadows of Washington, D.C. She thought becoming a PI would be better than being a cop. She thought she'd never have to make another death notification or don a bulletproof vest again. She thought she could move past the pain of losing her best friend. She thought she'd be safe. But she couldn't have been more wrong. Now, agreeing to do a simple favour has brought her to a dead body, a missing person, and a battle of wits with an old friend who has dangerous secrets. If Willa can keep her focus, she could solve the murder, find the missing girl, and figure out if the person she's trusted with her life is the one trying to end it. HUNTER, MADDY passport CATCH ME IF YUKON (#12) ($22) Emily and her traveling seniors must solve yeti nother mystery as they trek through the Alaskan wil-derness. As tour escort Emily Andrew-Miceli leads her globetrotting band of Iowa sen-iors into the wilds of Alaska, she discovers that whales aren't the only killers on the prowl. When a tour member turns up dead on a mountainous hiking trail, Emily blames herself for the mishap—until she learns that something far hairier might be the cause. One of the seniors snaps a photo of what looks like Bigfoot, raising questions about what happened to the victim. But the elusive sasquatch is just a legend, isn't it? Between whale watching in the glacial waters near Seward and ziplining in the primal forests of Denali, Emily finds herself locked in a game of cat and mouse with a killer who may or may not be mere myth. IRVING, NICHOLAS sniper REAPER: GHOST TARGET (#1) ($13.50) Vick “The Reaper” Harwood is an esteemed sniper with a record kill count—33 kills in 90 days—when he is wounded at war. Now back in the U.S. with little memory of what hap-pened, Harwood is eager to put the past behind him. He finds work training Special Forces snipers in Fort Bragg and enters a promising relationship with an Olympic med-alist named Jackie. But his sixth sense tells him that something about his new life is not right. When a series of assassinations takes place in the area, Harwood has to wonder why the killings seem to be in line with his every move. Or why he feels like he’s being followed. Or how a sniper rifle matching the description of his own, which he lost, turns up out of nowhere. With his memory hazy and full of blackouts, Harwood is final-ly forced to ask himself: Is he being framed? Or is he the killer? Soon he’s on the run from the authorities. Jackie falls off the radar. And the assassinated men are outed as drug and sex traffickers. Nothing is adding up and time is running out for Harwood to unravel this mystery—or pay the price for crimes he may or may not have committed. JACKSON, LISA alvarez WILLING TO DIE (#8) ($12.99) The crime scene is as puzzling as it is brutal. Doctor Paul Latham and his wife, Brindel, are found dead in separate beds in their beautiful San Francisco home, each the victim of a gunshot wound to the head. There are no signs of forced entry, and despite the emptied safe it’s clear this murder isn’t random. For Detective Regan Pescoli, news of her sister’s death brings grief mixed with guilt. She and Brindel weren’t close, and Pescoli barely knows

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 19

her teenage niece, Ivy, a secretive girl who lands on her doorstep in Grizzly Falls, Mon-tana. Though Pescoli is on maternity leave, she’s soon mired deep in the investigation headed by her partner, Selena Alvarez. But as the list of suspects keeps growing, so does the body count. Maybe it’s exhaustion or hormones that have Pescoli on edge, feeling more vulnerable than ever before. Or maybe the chill running through her veins is justified. Because as the case takes a new, terrifying turn, Pescoli’s loved ones and her life are at the mercy of a killer who’ll go to any lengths to see her suffer. JAKUBOWSKI, MAXIM INVISIBLE BLOOD ($19.95) Open the files on an anthol-ogy of seventeen new crime stories to probe the brutal and complex hearts of criminals, and unravel the strangest of mysteries. Watch as a secretive group of intelligence com-munity officers trace Jack Reacher through Heathrow in Lee Child's "Smile". In Mary Hoffman's "Fallen Woman", a journalist on the trail of a secretive drug lord gets caught up in the violent suicide of a young woman in Siena. And in Jeffery Deaver's "Connecting the Dots", detectives follow the trail of clues in the brutal killing of a homeless man, wherever it may lead... Invisible Blood is a gripping collection exploring the compulsions of the criminal mind. Stories from: Lee Child, Jeffery Deaver, Denise Mina, R.J. Ellory, Christopher Fowler, Stella Duffy, Ken Bruen, Lauren Hender-son, James Grady, Jason Starr, Mary Hoffman, Cathi Unsworth, Bill Beverly, Lavie Tidhar, Johana Gustawsson, A K Benedict, John Harvey JEWELL, A B MAN WHO WOULDN’T DIE ($21) Silicon Valley scion Captain Don Donogue is dead under mysterious circumstances. In fact, he might’ve well have been murdered. Just ask Captain Don himself. He’s been sending messages about his suspi-cious death from beyond the grave. Yep, he’s been tweeting from the afterlife. Or so it seems. Could life-after-death be Silicon Valley’s latest innovation? Our bodies die but our souls and social media accounts are eternal? This is the mystery that confronts the only sane person left in a region gone mad with greed, William Fitzgerald. Fitch. He’s a world-class detective, tough, stoic, carries a big fist and a flip phone. One day, a woman knocks on Fitch’s door. She’s got a handful of cash and a wild story: She says that her father was Captain Don, or is Captain Don. He was killed, or maybe not. He’s tweeting from beyond. Fitch takes the case and goes into the belly of the valley, discovering that life and death, well, sometimes they’re just another transaction JOHNSON, CRAIG walt COLD DISH (#1) ($12.99) Originally published in 2004, this is the first time this title has been published in mass market paperback format in North America. After twenty-five years as sheriff of Absaroka County, Walt Long-mire’s hopes of finishing out his tenure in peace are dashed when Cody Pritchard is found dead near the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Two years earlier, Cody has been one of four high school boys given suspended sentences for raping a local Cheyenne girl. Somebody, it would seem, is seeking vengeance, and Longmire might be the only thing standing between the three remaining boys and a Sharps .45-70 rifle. With life-long friend Henry Standing Bear, Deputy Victoria Moretti, and a cast of characters both tragic and humorous enough to fill in the vast emptiness of the high plains, Walt Long-mire attempts to see that revenge, a dish best served cold, is never served at all. KALLENTOFT, MONS WATER ANGELS ($15.99) A married couple is found dead in their jacuzzi. Their adopted five-year-old daughter has vanished. Inspector Malin Fors, the troubled but brilliant star of the Linkoping police force, is put in charge of the case. But this is a haunting mystery where the borders have been blurred: those between the living and the dead, between good and evil. Malin is only too aware of her own tendencies towards obsession and addiction. As the investigation takes a darker turn, forcing Malin to confront her own demons, will she hold out long enough to find the killer - and the missing girl - before it's too late? KAMAL, SHEENA IT ALL FALLS DOWN (#2) ($19.99) Growing up, Nora Watts only knew one parent—her father. When he killed himself, she denied her grief and car-ried on with her life. Then a chance encounter with a veteran who knew him raises dis-turbing questions Nora can’t ignore—and dark emotions she can’t control. To make her peace with the past, she has to confront it. Finding the truth about her father’s life and his violent death takes her from Vancouver to Detroit where Sam Watts grew up, far away from his people and the place of his birth. Thanks to a disastrous government pol-icy starting in the 1950s, thousands of Canadian native children like Sam were adopted by American families. In the Motor City, Nora discovers that the circumstances sur-rounding Sam’s suicide are more unsettling than she’d imagined. KELLY, SOFIE magical cats CATS CAME BACK (#10) ($10.99) The charming Minnesota town of Mayville Heights is hosting a music festival, and the whole place is bustling with musicians and tourists. Kathleen is looking forward to taking in some fab-ulous performances--and her two cats, Owen and Hercules, are looking forward to tak-ing in some fabulous sardine crackers. But then the trio stumbles across a dead body by the river. The victim is a close friend--who also happens to be a look-alike of a popular cabaret singer set to perform at the festival. Who could have wanted to harm this inno-cent girl? Was it a case of mistaken identity?

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 20

KEPLER, LARS linna RABBIT HUNTER (#6) ($24.95) A stranger wearing a mask stands in the shadow of a garden. He's watching his first victim through the window. He will kill him slowly, make it last--play him a nursery rhyme--make him pay. There's on-ly one person the police can turn to--ex-Detective Joona Linna--but he's serving time in a high-security prison. So they offer him a chance to secure his freedom: help Superin-tendent Saga Bauer track down the vicious killer known as the Rabbit Hunter, before he strikes again. Soon another three victims have been murdered and Stockholm is in the grip of terror. Joona Linna must catch a disturbed predator, whose trail of destruction leads back to one horrific night of violence--with consequences more terrifying than an-yone could have imagined. KIM, YIDEUM BLOOD SISTERS ($22.50) This book tells the story of Jeong Yeoul, a young Korean college student in the 1980's, when the memory of President Chun Doohwan's violent suppression of student demonstrations against martial law was still fresh. Yideum captures the sense of dread felt by many Korean women during this time as Jeong struggles in a swirl of misguided desires and hopelessness against a society distorted by competing ideologies, sexual violence, and cultural conservatism. Facing this helplessness, her impulse is to escape into the world of art. KNEUBUHL, VICTORIA NALANI MURDER LEAVES ITS MARK (#2) ($26) When a weekend of horseback rides and beachcombing at the old Haleiwa Hotel turns deadly, Mina Beckwith and Ned Manusia are on the case. The unlikely pair—she a journalist, he a playwright—find themselves once again on the trail of a killer in 1930s Honolulu, where sugar barons cavort at their beachfront mansions while unrest among the working class grows. Their investigation places them in the midst of hot-headed un-ion organizers and the crème de la crème of Honolulu society as well as the riffraff of the city’s backstreets. LAPENA, SHARI SOMEONE WE KNOW ($24.95) In a quiet, leafy suburb in up-state New York, a teenager has been sneaking into houses—and into the owners' com-puters as well—learning their secrets, and maybe sharing some of them, too. Who is he, and what might he have uncovered? After two anonymous letters are received, whispers start to circulate, and suspicion mounts. And when a woman down the street is found murdered, the tension reaches the breaking point. Who killed her? Who knows more than they're telling? And how far will all these very nice people go to protect their own secrets? MACBRIDE, STUART logan ALL THAT’S DEAD (#12) ($22.99) Inspector Logan McRae is looking forward to a nice simple case – something to ease him back into work after a year off sick. But the powers-that-be have other ideas. The high-profile anti-independence campaigner, Professor Wilson, has gone missing, leaving nothing but bloodstains behind. There’s a war brewing between the factions for and against Scottish Nationalism. Infighting in the police ranks. And it’s all playing out in the merciless glare of the media. Logan’s superiors want results, and they want them now. Someone out there is trying to make a point, and they’re making it in blood. If Logan can’t stop them, it won’t just be his career that dies MACKINLAY/MCKINLAY, JENN library HITTING THE BOOKS (#9) ($10.99) When a stack of library materials is found at the scene of a hit and run, library director Lindsey Norris finds herself dragged into the investigation as the police try to link the driver of the stolen car to the person who borrowed the books. Before Lindsey can delve into the library's records, the victim of the hit and run, Theresa Houston, suffers another "accident" and the investigation shifts from driver negligence to attempted homicide. A clue surfaces in the confiscated library materials that could crack open the case and it is up to Lindsey to piece it all together. But things are not as they seem in the sleepy town of Briar Creek and when the driver of the stolen car turns up dead, Lindsey, her staff and her library friends have to hit the books before the murderer gets the last word. MACLEOD, TORQUIL sundstrom MALICE IN MALMO (#6) ($22.50) When a leading Malmo entrepreneur turns up bound and gagged in a city-centre cemetery, the Skane County Police have no obvious clues as to who is behind the kidnap. More com-plications arise when a second leading business figure is snatched and Inspector Anita Sundstrom and her colleagues are under pressure not only to find the victim, but also catch the gang. The team is then further stretched with the murder of a malicious inves-tigative journalist who has ruined the lives of many prominent Swedes. Unlike the kid-nap case, there is no shortage of suspects. Both investigations are far from straightfor-ward, and Anita's professional life is about to become more turbulent with her nemesis, Alice Zetterberg, waiting in the wings. Warring companies... fallen celebrities... and an adversary from a past case reappears on the scene as Anita Sundstrom tries to find the truth. MACNEAL, SUSAN ELIA hope PRISONER IN THE CASTLE (#8) ($23) Novem-ber, 1942. World War II is raging, and former spy Maggie Hope knows too much: what the British government is willing to do to keep its secrets, who is lying, who the double-crossers are. She knows exactly who is sending agents to their deaths. These are the

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 21

reasons Maggie is isolated on a remote Scottish island, in a prison known as Killoch Castle. When one of her fellow inmates drops dead in the middle of his after-dinner drink—he’s only the first. As victims fall one by one, Maggie will have to call upon all her wits and skills to escape—not just certain death . . . but certain murder. For what’s the most important thing that Maggie Hope knows? She must survive. MACPHERSON/MCPHERSON, CATRIONA last SCOT & SODA (#2) ($22) Scot-tish-born California transplant Lexy Campbell sails into trouble when her houseboat party ends on a deadly note. Now settled in her little houseboat, moored in the slough at the back of the Last Ditch Motel, Lexy Campbell wants nothing more than to build her counseling business, avoid her mother's phone calls and—who knows?—meet a nice guy. But when she throws a Halloween party for her motley crew of motel pals, the on-ly single man is too old for her, too wrapped up in the case of beer chilling in the slough, and—oh, yes—too dead. The sensible choice is to leave it up to the cops to identify the body and catch the killer. So faster than you can say "Tam O'Shanter," Lexy and her friends jump into the case themselves, delving deep into their town's past for the roots of a mystifying crime. MARKS, MARY quilting KNOT ON HER LIFE (#7) ($10.99) Martha’s eager to fin-ish the baby quilt she’s making for her new granddaughter, but she scraps those plans when a young girl rings her doorbell begging for help. Poppy Halaby, the foster child of Martha’s neighbor, is an orphan whose parents were murdered by a killer who was nev-er caught. When Poppy’s doting foster mom falls suspiciously ill, Martha is determined to keep the child safe. But she’ll have to unravel more about Poppy’s parents to stitch a broken family back together again—and prevent another crime cut from the same cloth. MARLAND, STEPHANIE YOU DIE NEXT ($15.99) When a group of urban explor-ers stumble across a murderer's kill room in a derelict film studio, terror strikes. And when one of the group is found dead, the team realise - they're being hunted. DI Domi-nic Bell is investigating the murder, but as the body count rises, time is running out. The only person who can help him is a figure from his past, Clementine Starke - but Clementine is haunted by her own demons. Can the two of them pair up to catch the killer? Or is it already too late? MEIER, LESLIE lucy stone SILVER ANNIVERSARY MURDER (#25) ($10.99) As Tinker’s Cove, Maine, buzzes over a town-wide silver wedding anniversary bash, Lucy is reminded of her nuptials and ponders the whereabouts of Beth Gerard, her strong-willed maid of honor. It only takes one phone call for Lucy to realize that a reunion will happen sooner than later—at Beth’s funeral. Beth, who was in the process of finalizing her fourth divorce, had a reputation for living on the edge—but no one can believe she would jump off a penthouse terrace in New York City. The more Lucy learns about Beth’s former husbands, the more she suspects one of them committed murder. Sum-moning her friend’s impulsive spirit, Lucy vows to scour New York in search of the killer—even if it means risking herself as the next victim. MILOSZEWSKI, ZYGMUNT RAGE ($22) All eyes are on famous prosecutor Teo-dor Szacki when he investigates a skeleton discovered at a construction site in the idyl-lic Polish city of Olsztyn. Old bones come as no shock to anyone in this part of Poland, but it turns out these remains are fresh, the flesh chemically removed. Szacki questions the dead man’s wife, only to be left with a suspicion she’s hiding something. Then an-other victim surfaces—a violent husband, alive but maimed—giving rise to a theory: someone’s targeting domestic abusers. And as new clues bring the murderer closer to those Szacki holds dear, he begins to understand the terrible rage that drives people to murder. MUKHERJEE, ABIR wyndham SMOKE AND ASHES (#3) ($19.99) India, 1921. Captain Sam Wyndham is battling a serious addiction to opium that he must keep secret from his superiors in the Calcutta police force. But Wyndham finds himself in a tight spot when he stumbles across a corpse in an opium den. When he then comes across a second body bearing the same injuries, Wyndham is convinced that there's a deranged killer on the loose. However, revealing his presence in the opium den could cost him his career. As Wyndham and Sergeant 'Surrender-not' Banerjee set out to solve the two murders, Wyndham must tread carefully, keeping his personal demons secret, before someone else turns up dead. NEWHAM, VICKY maya rahman OUT OF THE ASHES (#2) ($22.99) When a flash mob on Brick Lane is interrupted by a sudden explosion, DI Maya Rahman dashes to the scene. A fire is raging through one of the city's most infamous streets, the site of Maya's childhood home. And the discovery of two charred bodies in the burnt-out building transforms an arson attack into a murder case. With witnesses too caught up in the crowd to have seen anything useful, Maya is facing a complex investigation without a single lead. And, when reports of a second, even more horrifying crime land on Ma-ya's desk, it's obvious there's more at stake than she could ever have imagined. She must find the answers - before all of East London goes up in flames. OATES, JOYCE CAROL TRIUMPH OF THE SPIDER MONKEY ($13.50) Aban-doned as a baby in a bus station locker, shuttled from one abusive foster home and de-

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 22

tention center to another, Bobbie Gotteson grew up angry, hurting, damaged. His hun-ger to succeed as a musician brought him across the country to Hollywood, but along with it came his seething rage, his paranoid delusions, and his capacity for acts of shocking violence. Unavailable for 40 years, The Triumph of the Spider Monkey this definitive edition for the first time pairs the original novel with a never-before-collected companion novella by Joyce Carol Oates, unseen since its sole publication in a literary journal nearly half a century ago, which examines the impact of Gotteson's killing spree on a woman who survived it, as seen through the eyes of the troubled young man hired by a private detective to surveil her. O’MALLEY, DANIEL STILETTO ($22.49) When two secret organizations are forced to merge after years of enmity and bloodshed, only one person has the fearsome powers--and the bureaucratic finesse--to get the job done. Rook Myfanwy Thomas must broker a deal between two bitter adversaries: The Checquy--the centuries-old covert or-ganization that protects society from supernatural threats, and... The Grafters--a super-natural threat. But as bizarre attacks sweep London and threaten negotiations, old ha-treds flare. Surrounded by spies, only the Rook and two women who absolutely loathe each other can find the culprits before they trigger all-out war. PATTERSON, JAMES TEXAS RANGER ($12.99) Across the ranchlands and cities of his home state, Rory Yates's discipline and law-enforcement skills have carried him far: from local highway patrolman to the honorable rank of Texas Ranger. He arrives in his hometown to find a horrifying crime scene and a scathing accusation: he is named a suspect in the murder of his ex-wife, Anne, a devoted teacher whose only controversial act was ending her marriage to a Ranger. In search of the killer, Yates plunges into the inferno of the most twisted and violent minds he's ever encountered, vowing to never surrender. That code just might bring him out alive. PENROSE, ANDREA MURDER AT HALF MOON GATE (#2) ($21.95) When Lord Wrexford discovers the body of a gifted inventor in a dark London alley, he promptly alerts the watchman and lets the authorities handle the matter. But Wrexford soon finds himself drawn into the investigation when the inventor’s widow begs for his assistance. It seems her husband’s designs for a revolutionary steam-powered engine went missing the night of his death. The plans could be worth a fortune . . . and very dangerous in the wrong hands. Joining Wrexford in his investigation is Charlotte Sloane, who uses the pseudonym A. J. Quill to publish her scathing political cartoons. She doesn’t mind tap-ping her extensive network of informants critical to her work to track down an elusive killer. With danger lurking at every turn, the potent combination of Wrexford’s analyti-cal mind and Sloane’s exacting intuition begins to unravel the twisted motivations be-hind the inventor’s death. But they are up against a killer ready to strike again before they can recover the inventor’s priceless designs. PERKS, HEIDI HER ONE MISTAKE ($22) Charlotte was supposed to be looking af-ter the children, and she swears she was. But while her three kids are all safe and sound at the school fair, Alice, her best friend Harriet’s daughter, is nowhere to be found. Frantically searching everywhere, Charlotte knows she must find the courage to tell Harriet that her beloved only child is missing—and admit that she’s solely to blame. Harriet, devastated by this unbearable loss, can no longer bring herself to speak to Charlotte again, much less trust her. Now, more isolated than ever and struggling to keep her marriage afloat, Harriet believes nothing and no one. But as the police bear down on both women, trying to piece together the puzzle of what happened to this little girl, dark secrets begin to surface—and Harriet discovers that trusting Charlotte again may be the only thing that will reunite her with her daughter. PFLUGER, ANDREAS IN THE DARK ($25.50) Jenny Aaron was the best of the best. An expert marksman and trained in four martial arts techniques, she was the star member of an elite team charged with tracking Germany's most dangerous criminals. But when a disastrous mission ended in irreversible blindness, Jenny was forced to abandon her dangerous career. Five years later, she's still haunted by her failure when she is called upon to investigate the brutal murder of a prison psychologist. Now she must test the new skills that she's acquired in her world of darkness — but are they enough to battle a ruthless killer whose intelligence and daring match her own? PRESTON & CHILD pendergast VERSES FOR THE DEAD (#18) ($20.99) After an overhaul of leadership at the FBI's New York field office, A. X. L. Pendergast is ab-ruptly forced to accept an unthinkable condition of continued employment: the famous-ly rogue agent must now work with a partner. Pendergast and his new colleague, junior agent Coldmoon, are assigned to investigate a rash of killings in Miami Beach, where a bloodthirsty psychopath is cutting out the hearts of his victims and leaving them with cryptic handwritten letters at local gravestones. The graves are unconnected save in one bizarre way: all belong to women who committed suicide. But the seeming lack of con-nection between the old suicides and the new murders is soon the least of Pendergast's worries. Because as he digs deeper, he realizes the brutal new crimes may be just the tip of the iceberg: a conspiracy of death that reaches back decades.

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 23

RICHES, ANTHONY empire ALTAR OF BLOOD (#9) ($15.99) Ordered to cross the river Rhenus into barbarian Germany and capture a tribal priestess who may be the most dangerous person on the empire's northern border, they are soon subject to the machinations of an old enemy who will stop at nothing to sabotage their plans before they have even set foot on the river's eastern bank. But after their Roman enemy is neu-tralised they face a challenge greater still. With two of the Bructeri tribe's greatest treas-ures in their hands they must regain Roman territory by crossing the unforgiving wil-derness that was the graveyard of Roman imperial strategy two hundred years before. And capture by the Bructeri's vengeful chieftain and his warband can only end in one way - a horrific sacrificial death on the tribe's altar of blood. ROBB, J D CONNECTIONS IN DEATH (#48) ($11.99) Homicide cop Eve Dallas and her billionaire husband, Roarke, are building a brand-new school and youth shelter. They know that the hard life can lead kids toward dangerous crossroads and, with this new project, they hope to nudge a few more of them onto the right path. For expert help, they hire child psychologist Dr. Rochelle Pickering—whose own brother pulled himself out of a spiral of addiction and crime with Rochelle’s support. Lyle is living with Rochelle while he gets his life together, and he’s thrilled to hear about his sister’s new job offer. But within hours, triumph is followed by tragedy. Returning from a cele-bratory dinner with her boyfriend, she finds Lyle dead with a syringe in his lap, and Eve’s investigation confirms that this wasn’t just another OD. After all his work to get clean, Lyle’s been pumped full of poison—and a neighbor with a peephole reports see-ing a scruffy, pink-haired girl fleeing the scene. Now Eve and Roarke must venture into the gang territory where Lyle used to run, and the ugly underground world of tattoo par-lors and strip joints where everyone has taken a wrong turn somewhere. They both be-lieve in giving people a second chance. Maybe even a third or fourth. But as far as they’re concerned, whoever gave the order on Lyle Pickering’s murder has run out of chances. ROLLINS, JAMES sigma force CRUCIBLE (#13) ($12.99) Arriving home on Christ-mas Eve, Commander Gray Pierce discovers his house ransacked, his pregnant lover missing, and his best friend’s wife, Kat, unconscious on the kitchen floor. With no shred of evidence to follow, his one hope to find the woman he loves and his unborn child is Kat, the only witness to what happened. But the injured woman is in a semi-comatose state and cannot speak—until a brilliant neurologist offers a radical approach to “unlock” her mind long enough to ask a few questions. What Pierce learns from Kat sets Sigma Force on a frantic quest for answers that are connected to mysteries reaching back to the Spanish Inquisition and to one of the most reviled and blood-soaked books in human history—a Medieval text known as the Malleus Maleficarum, the Hammer of Witches. What they uncover hidden deep in the past will reveal a frightening truth in the present and a future on the brink of annihilation, and force them to confront the ultimate question: What does it mean to have a soul? ROSE, KAREN sacramento SAY YOU'RE SORRY (#1) ($10.99) There is a serial killer on the loose, preying on vulnerable women. The only identifiable mark the killer leaves are letters—sometimes one, sometimes two—all carved into the torsos of his victims. Together they spell “Sydney.” When he grabs Daisy Dawson, he believes he has found his next victim. But despite her small stature, she fights back with an exper-tise that quickly frees her. Before fleeing the scene, Daisy also manages to grab what proves to be crucial evidence: a necklace from around the killer’s neck. The necklace is more than a trivial item—it is a link to a cold case that Special Agent Gideon Reynolds has been tracking for seventeen years. With Daisy’s help, Gideon finally has the oppor-tunity to get closer to the truth than ever before. But they might not get the chance, as the serial killer has a new target: Gideon and Daisy. ROTH, HOLLY CONTENT ASSIGNMENT ($19.50) On a rainy night in postwar Berlin, British journalist John Terrant encounters Ellen Content, a young civilian typist in the American Army's office of information. Their romance quickly blossoms, but as soon as Terrant realizes that Content is a spy, she abruptly vanishes into the divided city's treacherous maze of ruined streets. Terrant's anguished inquiries receive only bland assurances from the authorities that Content will contact him when her job is fin-ished. Two years later, Terrant's compulsively close reading of newspapers uncovers his first clue since Content's disappearance: her name appears in a list of passengers re-cently embarked on an ocean liner headed from London to New York. Within a few hours, the reporter is headed for the United States, despite dire warnings from the CIA and Scotland Yard to desist in his pursuit. After long months of inactivity, suddenly every minute counts as Terrant races to solve the mystery, find his lover, and avoid be-coming the latest victim in a string of killings. RYAN, ANNELISE NEEDLED TO DEATH ($10.99) Motivated by her own difficult past, Hildy has an unparalleled commitment to supporting troubled clients through grief and addiction in Sorenson, Wisconsin. But when a distraught group therapy member re-veals disturbing details about her late son’s potential murder, Hildy goes from dedicat-ed mental health professional to in-over-her-head amateur sleuth. Alongside her loyal

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 24

therapy Golden Retriever, Hildy stumbles through incriminating clues—and an unlikely partnership with Detective Bob Richmond, the irresistibly headstrong cop who shares her passion for helping others. SANDFORD, JOHN davenport RULES OF PREY (#1) ($12.99) Start the series here! If you like it there are 28 more. Lots of summer reading. The killer was mad but bril-liant. He left notes with every woman he killed. Rules of murder: Never have a motive. Never follow a discernible pattern. Never carry a weapon after it has been used... So many rules to his sick, violent games of death. But Lucas Davenport, the cop who’s out to get him, isn’t playing by the rules. SAVIANO, ROBERTO PIRANHAS ($24.50) Nicolas Fiorillo is a brilliant and ambi-tious fifteen-year-old from the slums of Naples, eager to make his mark and to acquire power and the money that comes with it. With nine friends, he sets out to create a new paranza, or gang. Together they roam the streets on their motor scooters, learning how to break into the network of small-time hoodlums that controls drug-dealing and petty crime in the city. They learn to cheat and to steal, to shoot semiautomatic pistols and AK-47s. Slowly they begin to wrest control of the neighborhoods from enemy gangs while making alliances with failing old bosses. Nicolas’s strategic brilliance is prodigious, and his cohorts’ rapid rise and envelopment in the ensuing maelstrom of vi-olence and death is riveting and impossible to turn away from. SCOTTOLINE, LISA r & d DAMAGED (#4) ($12.50) Ten-year-old Patrick O’Brien is a natural target at school. Shy, dyslexic, and small for his age, he tries to hide his first-grade reading level from everyone: from his classmates, from the grandfather who cares for him, and from the teachers who are supposed to help him. But the real trouble begins when Patrick is accused of attacking a school aide. The aide promptly quits and sues the boy, his family, and the school district. Patrick’s grandfather turns to the law firm of Rosato & DiNunzio for help, and Mary DiNunzio becomes Patrick’s true cham-pion and his only hope for security and justice. But there is more to the story than meets the eye and Patrick might be more troubled than he seems. With twists at every turn and secrets about the family coming to light, Mary DiNunzio might have found the case that can make her a true protector—or break her heart. SEGURA, ALEX fernandez BLACKOUT (#4) ($23.95) Nominated for the Anthony Award for Best Novel. Startling new evidence in a cold case that's haunted Pete Fernan-dez drags the exiled PI back to his hometown of Miami. But as Pete and his partner Kathy Bentley delve deeper into the unsolved murder, they become entangled in Mi-ami’s obsession with a charismatic and dangerous cult leader and his even more menac-ing followers. At the same time, the detectives find themselves at odds with a Florida politician’s fixation on wealth, fame and power. SHAFFER, ANDREW obama biden HOPE NEVER DIES (#1) ($19.99) Vice Presi-dent Joe Biden and President Barack Obama team up in this high-stakes thriller that combines a mystery worthy of Watson and Holmes with the laugh-out-loud bromantic chemistry of Lethal Weapon’s Murtaugh and Riggs. Vice President Joe Biden is fresh out of the Obama White House and feeling adrift when his favorite railroad conduc-tor dies in a suspicious accident, leaving behind an ailing wife and a trail of clues. To unravel the mystery, “Amtrak Joe” re-teams with the only man he’s ever fully trusted: the 44th president of the United States. Together they’ll plumb the darkest corners of Delaware, traveling from cheap motels to biker bars and beyond, as they uncover the sinister forces advancing America’s opioid epidemic. SIGURDARDOTTIR, YRSA huld ABSOLUTION (#3) ($24.99) The police find out about the crime the way everyone does: on Snapchat. The video shows the terrified vic-tim begging for forgiveness. When her body is found, it is marked with a number 2... Detective Huldar joins the investigation, bringing child psychologist Freyja on board to help question the murdered teenager's friends. Soon, they uncover that Stella was far from the angel people claim - but even so, who could have hated her enough to kill? Then another teenager goes missing, and more clips are sent. Freyja and Huldar can agree on two things at least: the truth is far from simple. And the killer is not done yet. SILVA, DANIEL allon NEW GIRL (#19) ($24.99 trade paperback, $35.99 hardcover) See Annotation in the Hardcover section above. SIMENON, GEORGES MAIGRET AND THE TRAMP ($17.50) While sleeping un-der the Pont Marie bridge, a homeless man known as Doc is viciously beaten and thrown into the River Seine to drown. A pair of bargemen manage to rescue him, and his identification reveals he was once a doctor in Mulhouse, where, coincidentally, In-spector Maigret’s sister-in-law lives. Seizing on this connection, Maigret must delve in-to the man’s personal circumstances to figure out just who might have wanted him dead—and why. SIMENON, GEORGES MAIGRET’S ANGER ($17.50) During a quiet spell in June, Maigret is called to investigate the disappearance of a reputable businessman, a night-club owner with properties in Montmarte and on the Champs-Élysées. Things take a dark turn when the man’s body is discovered near the famous Père Lachaise cemetery.

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 25

There’s no trace of the man having any enemies, and Maigret struggles to find any clues to the perpetrator—and loses his temper when his own reputation is threatened by the case. SIMENON, GEORGES MAIGRET AND THE GHOST (#62) ($17.50) During an un-dercover case, Inspector Maigret’s colleague Lognon is shot and rushed to surgery. The attack took place in a room he was sharing, unbeknownst to his friends and family, with a beautiful woman who has since disappeared. No one knows why he was there, but ru-mors are swirling that he was working on a case—something big. With all eyes on him, Inspector Maigret retraces Lognon’s secretive last few days and is drawn into the dark side of the Paris art world, where no one is as they seem. SPANN, SUSAN hiro TRIAL ON MOUNT KOYA (#6) ($17) November 1565: Mas-ter ninja Hiro Hattori and Portuguese Jesuit Father Mateo travel to a Buddhist temple at the summit of Mount Koya, carrying a secret message for an Iga spy posing as a priest on the sacred mountain. When a snowstorm strikes the peak, a killer begins murdering the temple's priests and posing them as Buddhist judges of the afterlife--the Kings of Hell. Hiro and Father Mateo must unravel the mystery before the remaining priests--including Father Mateo--become unwilling members of the killer's grisly council of the dead. STAALESEN, GUNNAR veum YOURS UNTIL DEATH (#2) ($25.95) The single-mother families of the isolated high-rise community under the shadow of the Lyder-horn, Bergen's great mountain - steep, dark and oppressive - were being robbed, terror-ized and molested by a teenage gang led by the psychopath, Joker, who looked like a priest, but with the eyes of a tiger and the teeth of a decaying corpse. It was at their "torture chamber", a hut in the pinewoods nearby, that Varg Veum, Private Investigator, first encountered the gang's pathetic but deadly ferocity. Eight-year-old Roar's bicycle had been stolen and not an adult in sight dared retrieve it. But a preliminary brush with such youthful violence was as nothing compared to what awaited Veum when he got to know Roar's shy yet sensuous mother, Wenche Andresen, and her estranged husband, Jonas. Veum's attempts to break up Joker and his pack of young thugs by enlisting the help of the local youth club leader proved a dead end. But not so dead as the man who lay prone with a knife in his back on the floor of Andresen's flat. STAALESEN, GUNNAR veum BIG SISTER (#21) ($20.95) Varg Veum receives a surprise visit in his office. A woman introduces herself as his half-sister, and she has a job for him. Her god-daughter, a 19-year-old trainee nurse from Haugesund, moved from her bedsit in Bergen two weeks ago. Since then no one has heard anything from her. She didn't leave an address. She doesn't answer her phone. And the police refuse to take her case seriously. Veum’s investigation uncovers a series of carefully covered-up crimes and pent-up hatreds, and the trail leads to a gang of extreme bikers on the hunt for a group of people whose dark deeds are hidden by the anonymity of the Internet. And then things get personal. STARK, RICHARD parker FLASHFIRE (#19) aka parker ($22.50), FIREBREAK (#20) ($22.50), BREAKOUT (#21) ($23.95), NOBODY RUNS FOREVER (#22) ($23.95), ASK THE PARROT (#23) ($23.95) and DIRTY MONEY (#24) ($23.95). Between 1962 and 2008 DONALD WESTLAKE wrote 24 Parker novels under the name of Richard Stark. Try one and see if you too will come to love this thief. The first in the series has been published under three different titles: Point Blank, Hunter and Payback. VERDON, JOHN gurney WHITE RIVER BURNING (#6) ($25.50) Tensions have been running high in White River as it approaches the one-year anniversary of a fatal shooting of a black motorist by a local police officer. The economically depressed, ra-cially polarized city is on edge, confronted with angry demonstrations, arson, and loot-ing. In the midst of the turmoil, a White River police officer is shot dead by an un-known sniper. As the town spirals out of control, local authorities approach Dave Gur-ney to conduct an independent investigation of the shooting. The situation in White River becomes truly explosive as more killings occur in what appears to be an escalat-ing sequence of retaliations. But when Gurney questions the true nature of all this bloodshed and zeroes in on peculiar aspects of the individual murders, his involvement is suddenly terminated. Obsessed with evidence that doesn't support the official version of events, Gurney cannot let go of the case. Despite intense opposition from the police, as well as from dangerous fanatics lurking in the shadows, he begins to uncover an astonishing structure of deception—learning that nothing in White River it what it seems to be. WILTON, TRACI salem MRS. MORRIS AND THE GHOST (#1) ($10.99) A griev-ing young widow, Charlene needed a new start—so she bought a historic mansion, sight unseen, and drove from Chicago to New England to start turning it into a bed-and-breakfast. On her first night in the house, she awakens to find a handsome man with startling blue eyes in her bedroom. Terror turns to utter disbelief when he politely intro-duces himself as Jack Strathmore—and explains that he used to live here—when he was alive. He firmly believes that someone pushed him down the stairs three years ago,

SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM August 2019 Page 26

and he won’t be able to leave until someone figures out who. If Charlene wants to get her business up and running in time for the Halloween tourist rush, and get this haunt-ing houseguest out of the way, she’ll have to investigate. Though truth be told, this ghost is starting to grow on her. WINDMEIJER, JEROEN ST. PAUL’S LABYRINTH ($17.99) When university pro-fessor Peter de Haan attends a library event, he has no idea of the dangers that await him. As an area outside the library collapses, a hidden tunnel is revealed. Inside cowers a naked man, covered in blood. Then Peter receives a mysterious text message - the hour has come... When Peter's colleague Judith disappears, he realises he has been drawn into a plot with consequences deadlier than he could ever have imagined. He has twenty-four hours to find her, otherwise she will be killed. As Peter investigates, he un-covers mysteries that have been hidden for years. But following his every footstep is an underground society who will stop at nothing to keep their secrets hidden. Will Peter save Judith in time, or will his quest end in disaster? Translated from the Dutch. WOODS, STUART barrington DELICATE TOUCH (#48) ($12.99) When an old ac-quaintance reaches out to Stone Barrington requesting assistance, the job seems easy enough. She needs an expert in an esoteric field, someone with both the knowledge and careful dexterity to solve a puzzle. But the solution to one small problem blows the lid open on a bigger scandal going back decades, and involving numerous prominent New Yorkers who would prefer the past stay buried. With this explosive information in-hand, Stone Barrington is caught between a rock and a hard place, his only options ei-ther to play it safe to the detriment of others, or to see justice done and risk fatal expo-sure