Review by New York Times Review
THE BIG PLOT twist in Clare Mackintosh's first novel, I LET YOU GO (Berkley, $26), is genuinely shocking. The jolts that follow, right up until the last page, are pretty good too. And if you're the kind of genre geek who jumps back to the beginning of a book to work out how you've been hoodwinked, you'll find that the author has played fair and square. This cunning psychological thriller opens at Christmastime in Bristol with the hit-and-run accident that kills a 5-year-old boy named Jacob - and with his mother's horror as she watches the driver of the car speed away. Detective Inspector Ray Stevens, the man in charge of the case, assembles a crack investigative team, but there are few leads to go on, and Jacob's traumatized single mother, who happens to be the only witness, withdraws into guilt and grief. ("It happened so quickly. . . . I only let go for a second.") The narrative continues in the anguished voice of Jenna Gray, recounting how she flees her home in the accident's aftermath and somehow makes her way to Wales, where she finds sanctuary by renting a stone cottage in the coastal village of Penfach. During the long, cold winter, her misery gradually lightens, and by summer Jenna is walking along the shore with the stray dog she has adopted (and the gentle veterinarian who's helping her care for him). She also finds an artistic project - drawing messages in the sand and taking photographs of them from the top of the cliffs - that tourists are eager to buy. Lest we forget, Inspector Stevens is still on the case back in Bristol. But by the time the police realize that Jacob's mother has no intention of returning home, they've lost much chance of locating her. "There was a bit of backlash on a local web forum," Stevens is told, "someone stirring up trouble, suggesting she was an unfit mother, that sort of thing." Web shaming is one of several aspects of socially condoned (or tolerated) sadism, including ostracism, domestic violence and the bullying of schoolchildren, that Mackintosh goes on to explore with great clarity. It's the reader's own mind that bends to the subtle misdirections and evasions of her storytelling. THE SINNER WHO gets a chance to start over is an archetypal figure in crime fiction. Steve Hamilton works a smart variation on it in THE SECOND LIFE OF NICK MASON (Putnam, $26), which presents the title character with the opportunity to shave 20 years off his 25-to-life prison sentence and make things right with his wife and daughter. To repay Darius Cole, the gang boss who arranged for his freedom, Mason must always carry the cellphone he's been given. "You're going to answer this phone," Mason's henchman tells him. "There is no busy. . . . There is only you answering this phone. Then doing exactly what I tell you to do." Regrettably, once Mason is back home in Chicago the first call on that phone directs him to kill a man - a crooked cop, as it happens, but still. . . . In that moment, Mason understands what Darius meant when he said, "For the next 20 years, your life belongs to me." Or does it? Darius is a cunning fellow who wants to run his criminal empire like his hero, Meyer Lansky. But Nick Mason is a desperate man, which gives him the edge in this battle. OSCAR DE MURIEL'S hugely entertaining Victorian mystery, THE STRINGS OF MURDER (Pegasus Crime, $26.95), finds Inspector Ian Frey in disgrace, sent by Scotland Yard to Edinburgh to join the Commission for the Elucidation of Unsolved Cases Presumably Related to the Odd and Ghostly. Frey is actually working undercover on a special mission from the prime minister to investigate the murder of a respected concert violinist at the rough hands of someone who seems to admire the work of Jack the Ripper. A fastidious fop, Frey is appalled by the gritty city and horrified by his superior, Adolphus McGray, a lusty Falstaffian character who calls his new colleague a "whiny lassie." The two actually work well together in this locked-room mystery. The real fun, though, is hearing the haughty Frey (who even brought along his fencing gear) recoil from the "dreadful" Scottish accents, the "disgusting" food and the "offensive stench" of the streets. JACK McMORROW GETS into some vicious fights in STRAW MAN (Islandport, $24.95), Gerry Boyle's new mystery in his rugged series set in the wilds of Maine. Take the bone-crunching brawl that Jack and his military-trained friends, Clair and Louis, get into when they run across four big guys with chain saws poaching hardwood trees on an old woman's land. The repercussions of that little scuffle not only complicate the onetime newspaper reporter's freelance assignment on private gun sales in Maine, but also endanger his family. The most hurtful fights, though, are those clenched-teeth exchanges with his wife, Roxanne, over an elementary-school project on pacifism that has her working closely w ith the soft-handed gentleman goat farmer who owns Heaven Sent Farm. ("Must be cashmere goats," Jack notes.) The difficulties facing peaceful people who must live in a violent world are revisited when Jack tries to write a story on a community of Old Order Mennonites. But, as Clair says when he hands Jack a Glock with an extra clip and two boxes of ammo: "I'm all for pacifism- But I'm not gonna die for it."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 3, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
As Jack the Ripper terrorizes London, Scotland Yard Commissioner Charles Warren is forced to resign. Unfortunately, Warren's allies are also being purged, and Inspector Ian Frey's only hope of reinstatement is accepting banishment to Edinburgh. There, a famed violinist has been murdered, and the body's mutilations have sparked fear that a Ripper copycat is at work. Even more perplexing, Guilleum Fontaine was found in his locked practice room surrounded by occult symbols. To aristocratic Frey's dismay, along with being dispatched to a sodden outpost, he's partnered with Nine-Nails McGray, whose unorthodox occult investigation division has been assigned the violinist's case. Cultured, logical Frey is immediately at odds with his brash new partner but soon finds him indispensable in interpreting occult clues and coaxing clues from witnesses. Detailed historical context, spine-tingling occult overtones, and witty characterization create a gripping, albeit reality-bending, story. Fans of Alec Grecian's and Will Thomas' gritty Victorian tales will want to see more of Frey.--Tran, Christine Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Sherlock Holmes meets the X-Files in de Muriel's standout debut, a creepy and atmospheric whodunit set in 1888. Scotland Yarder Ian Frey's career appears to be over when his mentor, Commissioner Sir Charles Warren, is forced from office by Lord Salisbury, the British prime minister, after Frey's failure to apprehend Jack the Ripper. Then Frey gets an unexpected reprieve from Salisbury, who appears in his rooms and asks him to travel to Edinburgh to probe the murder of Guilleum Fontaine, a virtuoso violinist. The prime minister is concerned that Fontaine's death will spark fears that the Ripper has inspired imitators poised to strike all over Great Britain. Frey's presence in Scotland is to be explained by his ostensible assignment to a special police unit that investigates ghosts and goblins, headed by the eccentric Inspector McGray, known as Nine-Nails. Frey and McGray quickly develop an uncomfortable working relationship, premised on trading insults, as they look into the grisly and puzzling murder. Fontaine was eviscerated in a locked room the same day he was heard playing an eerie melody popularly attributed to the devil. De Muriel matches the intricate mystery with a clever solution. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
As Jack the Ripper plies his sanguinary trade in 1888 Whitechapel, Inspector Ian Frey, his boss and patron ousted from Scotland Yard, is dispatched to Edinburgh to help solve what turns out to be an equally gruesome series of murders. The death of violinist Guilleum Fontaine, stabbed and disemboweled, was so grisly that the authorities would think it Jack's own handiwork if the notorious Ripper hadn't presented a fresh victim in London only a few hours later. Was Fontaine's killing the work of a copycat? Frey and Inspector Adolphus McCray, whom he's been detailed to assist, don't agree on much of anythingMcCray's idea of detecting, for instance, is to set the scraps of physical evidence before that renowned clairvoyant Madame Katerin but they soon come to agree that the Edinburgh killer has a distinct program of his own, one that seems to strike down everyone who dares to play one of the storied violins Fontaine's left behind. Theodore Wood, the conscientious, untalented conservatory student who inherited "the Maledetto," his Amati, had better watch himself. So had Alistair Ardglass, the dean of the conservatory, even though he didn't inherit Fontaine's Stradivarius himself. Maybe even Elgie, Frey's youngest brother, who's come to Edinburgh to play first violin for Sir Arthur Sullivan's latest opera. Will the salt-and-pepper cops interrupt the florid bickering in which they're both seriously overinvested long enough to put together the pieces and identify a killer who seems to have flown in from the dark side of the moon? De Muriel's debut offers nonviolinists ghostly, ghastly apparitions, unappealing accounts of unspeakable pub meals, and a steady drip of Had-I-But-Known foreshadowing and backshadowing. A series seems inevitable. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
