Storm Tide
Paul Doiron’s mysteries featuring Maine Game Warden Mike Bowditch now number 16 with the release of his latest, Storm Tide. This time out, Bowditch is doing penance, demoted to patrol status after having overstepped both his job mandate and the Canadian border, a big no-no for U.S. law enforcement officers. As the novel opens, he arrives as first responder to a devastating house fire. There is only one survivor, a baby, now cradled in the arms of the neighbor who called in the emergency. It turns out that the owner of the house had been suspected, but never convicted, of murdering his son. As a standalone incident, the house fire was not indicative of arson or homicide; house fires can happen to suspected killers as easily as they can happen to anyone else. But when another suspected killer meets a gruesome and untimely end soon afterward, it begins to become clear to Bowditch that someone is taking justice or revenge into their own hands. Bowditch is a well-drawn character, at times straddling the line between bravery and foolhardiness, but for all the right reasons. He certainly does not “color within the lines” regarding his job, but when he strays, he seems to generate at least grudging support from his superiors, and sometimes even from his long-suffering wife, in the end. Kudos for that.
Killer Vibes
Florida-set mysteries have long been known for their quirky antiestablishment protagonists and storylines, but Texas can give the Sunshine State a run for its money in that department, with writers like Joe R. Lansdale, Attica Locke and now Jack Friday, who chronicles the adventures and misadventures of low-level drug dealer-turned-PI Peter Key in Killer Vibes. Key is a classic ne’er-do-well, living in a friend’s garage, about to be kicked to the street after being caught sleeping with the friend’s wife. But life can be unpredictable: At his lowest ebb, Key receives the startling news that he is the sole beneficiary of a seven-figure estate comprising a ramshackle house and a big bag of cash. That is the good news. The bad news is twofold: a) the bank is about to foreclose on the house, and b) the cash component of the estate has gone missing, and a bunch of very bad people are hot on its trail. Key receives threatening messages, and things come to a head with the bombing of a neighbor’s car, a car that is a dead ringer (no pun intended) for his black Mazda. Key goes on the offensive, donning his PI hat and resolving to get to the bottom of the mystery at hand, hopefully while salvaging his inheritance and hanging on to his life. With plenty of action and hip dialogue, Killer Vibes is a terrific start to a new series.
A Murder in Springtime
A Murder in Springtime, Martin Walker’s 19th novel featuring France’s favorite modern-day cop, Bruno Courreges, leads with a brutal murder at the home of his close friend Pamela, leaving Bruno in the unaccustomed and uncomfortable position of stepping back from the investigation, as he is too close to the case. Enter Fabien Panton, a young but well-regarded member of the Police Judiciaire. At first, clues are rather thin on the ground, but the consensus is that the victim and the killer knew each other, as the killing was particularly savage, with repeated (and even postmortem) blunt-instrument blows to the head. As the investigation progresses, the situation becomes murkier. The victim seems to have a fabricated history, and the killer is suggested to be either a very short man or a woman. Not much to go on. Unlike many of the Bruno books leading up to this one, there is very little opportunity for the reader to sort through clues and identify the killer before the big reveal. This does not distract from the reading experience one iota, however, as the other aspects of Walker’s craftsmanship are on display in spades: the loving descriptions of the Dordogne region of southwestern France, with all its scenery and culture; the relationships between Bruno and his constituents; his trusty basset hound sidekick, Balzac; and the food, OMG the food. So if the mystere perplexes you, feel free to focus on the milieu—you will not be disappointed.
★ The Death Row Club
I have to confess that the premise of V.A. Vazquez’s debut novel, The Death Row Club, briefly put me off. I found it a bit far-fetched—a murder at a club whose membership is limited to the children of serial killers. Spoiler Alert Number One: I was wrong. It roped me in from the first chapter and did not untie me until the final page. It was the only book of the four reviewed herein that I read in one sitting. (I am glad I started it early in the day!) The main characters are Nicola, whose father murdered five women, one of them Nicola’s best friend; Steffani, whose father is a serial abuser bent on controlling every aspect of his daughter’s life; and Greer, the true crime producer whose investigative skills revealed Nicola’s father as the Ellicott Creek Ripper, and who is also the daughter of an incarcerated serial killer. There are other club members, but these are the three that propel the story along, each with first-person recollections of their pasts. Spoiler Alert Number Two: Some of these recollections may be designed to mislead. And along the way, one club member will get murdered, one person will disappear, one will jump off a bridge over a desert gorge, and a crowd of people will have to determine just how far they will go to protect their closely guarded secrets. One final note: My favorite part of doing monthly book reviews for BookPage is happening upon an author’s debut novel and finding it to be unputdownable. The Death Row Club is Unputdownable with a capital-U.