The Last Murder at the End of the World
In Stuart Turton’s post-apocalyptic thriller, The Last Murder at the End of the World, the world as we know it came to a cataclysmic end some 90 years back, when a malevolent insect-infested fog engulfed the globe, killing everything in its amorphous path. Only a handful of survivors on a remote Greek island are still alive. The leader of the island is an older (17 decades’ worth of older) woman named Niema, who developed the means to keep the fog at bay, albeit too late for everyone in the world save for the island’s 122 villagers and two of her fellow scientists. And there they sit, living out the peaceful existence that somehow eluded humanity in all the millennia leading up to the end times. But there is trouble in paradise, as the narrator (a disembodied female voice eerily reminiscent of HAL the computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey) lets the reader know from early on. The unthinkable is about to happen on the island—a murder, the resolution of which is key to saving the island from the fog, which has begun to penetrate the defenses that Niema set up all those years ago. If you like some sci-fi with your murder, or conversely, some murder with your sci-fi, you have come to the right place. It’s a locked-room mystery expanded to island-sized dimensions, with a narrator who may be putting a finger on the scale that will determine the continuing existence of humankind: Y’all ain’t seen nothin’ like this before.
The Last Note of Warning
Call it the Jazz Age, the Prohibition era, the Roaring ’20s; whatever you call it, it’s Vivian Kelly’s golden ticket to the naughtiness and revelry denied by her strict Irish upbringing before she emigrated to America. Her venue of choice is the Nightingale speak-easy, where she works pouring drinks for the high society clientele. The Last Note of Warning marks Vivian’s third appearance in Katharine Schellman’s popular series, in which atmosphere doubles as a character and murder abounds. This time out, the murder hits rather closer to home: The prime suspect is none other than Vivian Kelly herself, the damning evidence being wealthy businessman Buchanan’s dried blood on her hands. Luckily for her, some well-placed friends come to her rescue, but the best deal they can broker puts Vivian in the unenviable position of having to serve up the real killer within seven days’ time. The mystery grows, um, mysteriouser when Vivian starts to suspect that someone intentionally framed her for Buchanan’s death. And heaven knows there is no shortage of shady types hanging around the Nightingale. The characters are colorful, the story is deliciously well-spun and the ambiance will make you wish that you too had been a-struttin’ in the Jazz Age.
★ When We Were Silent
Auspicious debut alert: Fiona McPhillips’ When We Were Silent is the strongest first novel I have read in ages, right up there with Attica Locke’s Black Water Rising, my go-to example of first-timer excellence. If you attend Dublin’s prestigious Highfield Manor private school, the first thing you learn is “What happens at Highfield stays at Highfield,” even if it involves episodes that border on the unspeakable. Louise Manson is haunted by one such episode, even though it’s been nearly 40 years since her time at the school. By most measures, she didn’t really belong at Highfield. She was working class, inhabiting the same hallowed halls as the elite by virtue of a scholarship, not old money and familial connections. And she was not there for the prestige: She was there to exact revenge for her best friend’s suicide and to take down those she deemed responsible. Not to give away anything here, but this endeavor did not go too well. Spectacularly badly, in fact, and decades later Louise is still dealing with the fallout. But now in the modern day, thanks in part to that unwritten Highfield code of silence, she may have a second chance at retribution—or she may face fallout that far surpasses that first time around. When We Were Silent is not always a comfortable read, but you didn’t come here for comfortable, did you?
Farewell, Amethystine
Easy Rawlins is 50?? How the hell did that happen? When we think of him, we think of a young Denzel Washington from the film Devil in a Blue Dress, adapted from the book that introduced Walter Mosley’s iconic private investigator to the world way back in 1990. But hey, even Denzel is past 50 now. As Farewell, Amethystine opens, the 50-year-old Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins of 1970 is, by comparison to his younger days at least, less the firebrand and more the respectable businessman. That said, when a gorgeous young Black woman with a sad story enters his office, an event that has taken place with some regularity over the years, he can still be coaxed into action, and it is a fair bet that he will acquit himself much as he did in his younger days. Amethystine Stoller is missing one husband, and she appears convinced that Easy Rawlins is the go-to guy to find him. Which, of course, he does in short order, but the husband is sadly quite dead. Normally, Easy would tap his cop buddy, Melvin Suggs, to give him a hand with the parts of an investigation that only the police have access to. But at the moment, Suggs is in the wind with problems of his own. Do those problems include another beautiful woman? Well, yes. And will those disparate story lines have some points of connection? Seems likely. And will Mosley wrap it all up better than pretty much anyone else in the field? A resounding yes on that.