Jackal

 Jackal by Erin E. Adams, 352 pages.

Liz Rocher returns to her hometown in Johnstown, Pennsylvania only very reluctantly. But it's her best friend's wedding, and after a traumatic breakup in New York she has to prove to herself she can still trust her own judgement. Then her best friend's daughter (who is also her own beloved stepdaughter) goes missing in the woods the night of the wedding, and the only sign is a bloodstained scrap of her dress. In the desperate search for the little girl Liz learns that she is not the first little black girl to go missing in those woods, and if she ever wants to find her Liz is going to have to get to the bottom of dozens of disappearances and deaths stretching back decades, including an encounter from her own youth that left her scarred.

This book is a really compelling piece of social horror, and an engaging mystery. For the first half of the book or so I wasn't even certain what genre it was going to turn out to be. And there is just so much plausible evil in this book that I wasn't certain who the villain was until the book revealed it. This was a really interesting read, and I would definitely recommend it for fans of the genre. 

Penance

Penance by Kanae Minato, 229 pages.
An odd, disjointed, angry book that starts with the murder of Emily, a twelve-year-old girl. The murder takes place near where she had been playing with four of her friends. After the murder is discovered, none of the other girls can describe the murderer, event though they had all seen him. And, as it is the festival of Obon, and there are lots of family and friends visiting the small rural town, the police have no luck hunting down the killer. A series of recent doll thefts in the town convince many that the thief and the killer are the same person, but  Emily's mother blames the girls and vows revenge. Her vow, and the letters she writes to the four of them detailing her plans for vengeance don't really help the girls with the trauma they have experienced. Somehow the blame, and the guilt and the lives they live cause the girls to be drawn into weird violent scenarios (that don'r really strike me as particularly probable) that cause them all to have to kill someone themselves. Like I said, a little odd and disjointed.

The Reversal

The Reversal by Michael Connelly, 389 pages.
The fourth book in the Mickey Haller / Lincoln Lawyer series finds the committed defense attorney switching sides and working for the prosecutor.
Jason Jessup had been convicted of killing a young girl twenty-four years ago, but had been set free when DNA evidence was tested and turned out to belong to someone else.
Haller, convinced of Jessup's guilt in this heinous crime, must battle his own instincts as a defense attorney, Jessup and his defense team, and the entrenched interests in the DA's office as he tries to find the truth. Haller enlists his half-brother, Harry Bosch, and his ex-wife, Maggie McPherson to fight on his side. Connelly never disappoints. His books are uniformly excellent.

Sharp Objects

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, 254 pages

Camille Preaker is a crime reporter in Chicago, but is sent back to her hometown in the Missouri boot heel to cover a possible serial kidnapper and murderer. Staying with her cold mother, nondescript stepfather, and unnerving 13-year-old sister in the sterile home where she grew up makes Camille slip back into the discomfort of her youth as she attempts to separate rumor from fact.

Flynn (Gone Girl, Dark Places) is not known for creating likeable characters, but in this, her debut novel, she succeeds in making Camille sympathetic, while still messed up beyond belief. I'll admit that, pretty early on, I could see where this story might end up; that said, I had no idea exactly how we'd reach that point, and there were enough twists and tension to make the journey fascinating (albeit in a slightly stomach-turning way). IMO, this is Flynn's best book. Well worth a read.

The House of Silk

The House of Silk: A Sherlock Holmes Novel by Anthony Horowitz  294 pp.

Anthony Horowitz who created and does an exemplary job of writing the popular British television series Foyle's War and the young adult Alex Rider series has captured the style and tone of Conan Doyle's tales of the consummate British detective, Sherlock Holmes. As in those familiar Conan Doyle stories Holmes friend/assistant/biographer, Dr. Watson, is the narrator. He relates the story years later, long after the death of Holmes and Watson's dear wife, Mary. Many characters from the original stories make appearances including Scotland Yard's Inspector Lestrade, Holmes housekeeper Mrs. Hudson, his brother Mycroft, Dr. Trevelyan who first appeared in "The Adventure of the Resident Patient" and the Baker Street Irregulars. What begins as a tale of an attempted robbery on an American train and the destruction of several valuable paintings soon becomes a saga of murder and intrigue in which Holmes finds himself jailed for the murder of a young girl. It is all connected to the mysterious "House of Silk" whose members have warned Holmes against further investigations and which no one, not even brother Mycroft, is willing to talk about. In the end the House of Silk is far more evil than the clues lead you to believe. There is more action than in the traditional Holmes stories including frequent gunplay and a "high speed" carriage chase. Horowitz has captured Holmes and Watson with great style while still managing to touch on the plight of orphaned children at the turn of the 20th century. I listened to the audiobook version read by by the actor, Sir Derek Jacobi (I, Claudius; Brother Cadfael). Jacobi captured the voice of Dr. Watson magnificently although in my mind Holmes & Watson will always look like Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce.

The Hangman's Daughter

The Hangman's Daughter by Oliver Pötzsch  435 pp.

in the mid-1600s, Jakob Kuisl is a hangman descended from a family of hangmen. (The author is also descended from hangmen.) Kuisl is also the one designated to torture confessions from prisoners. In spite of this, Kuisl has his kind side. When the local midwife is accused of the murder of local children and witchcraft, the hangman and the son of the local physician, himself a physician, embark on a search for the real killer while conspiring to keep the midwife alive. What results is a tale of a creepy one armed men, arson, kidnapping, murders, buried treasure, and an illicit romance between the hangman's daughter and the physician's son. There is a lot going on in this book and it's an excellent story that only occasionally lags. The one drawback is that some of the phrases/cliches used in the translation were far too modern for the 17th century. I don't know if the original German edition had that problem. 

The Little Friend

The Little Friend by Donna Tartt, 555 pages

Harriet's 9-year-old brother Robin was murdered when she was just four months old and the murder was never solved. Twelve years later, the mysterious tragedy still weighs on the family (Harriet's mother wanders despondently from room to room, living on a diet of peppermint ice cream and antidepressants, while her sister Allison sleeps constantly; Harriet's dad avoids the family altogether, having moved to a different city for work and taking up with a mistress). Perhaps because of this murder's effect on her family, Harriet decides to spend her summer vacation solving the murder (aided only by her pal Hely) and exacting revenge on the person who killed her brother. Enter some snake-handling preachers and a few drug-addled meth producers, and Harriet's summer investigation takes a dangerous turn.

I'd heard wonderful things about this book for ages and just now finally got around to reading it. I've got to say, I enjoyed Tartt's characters, all of which are fully formed, even if their motivations aren't always clear. Harriet, in particular, is the kind of too-smart-for-her-own-good kid that I immediately fell in love with. She's so serious and not particularly likeable, but Tartt makes you root for her anyway. I really didn't know where this story was going, and that's a good thing. My only complaint is the sheer number of snakes. Much like Indiana Jones, I kept thinking, "Why does it have to be snakes?" Tartt's clear, evocative writing makes them too realistic, to the point that I had to set the book down for a bit. Of course, if you don't mind snakes, you probably won't have a problem with this one.

Sacrilege

Sacrilege by S.J. Parris  423 pp.

This is the third in a series of books about excommunicated, Italian monk, Giordano Bruno. Bruno is a spy for the court of Queen Elizabeth. It is 1584, and he is reunited with Sophia Underhill, the disgraced daughter of the Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, who he met in Heresy, the first book of the series. Sophia is on the run after being accused of murdering her husband, a magistrate in Canterbury. Bruno goes there in an attempt to clear her name while also acting as a spy for the Queen and the Earl of Walsingham. While there he discovers that there is much evil in the famous cathedral city. Other murders, including those of two children, draw Bruno into a dangerous situation and ultimately being accused of murder himself. There is evil, intrigue, suspicion, and the mystery of what happened to the bones of Thomas Beckett. All combine to make this a page turner.

City of Bones by Michael Connelly

City of Bones by Michael Connelly, 393 pages. Detective Harry Bosch and his partner Jerry Edgar are given the case when a child's bones are found in a shallow grave in the woods above a residential neighborhood. The bones were buried twenty years before, and forensics show that the child had suffered years of abuse before he died. Not the most pleasant read, but not as horrible as some child murder books. As the book opens, Bosch becomes romantically involved with a woman who had just joined the force. Given Bosch's history of relationship dysfunction, the reader doesn't expect a sunny end, but there are some surprises here. This one falls somewhere in the middle of the series, Bosch is about 50 and working out of the Hollywood division. I have read some of the older books in the series and the two or three most recent books, so it is kind of fun to randomly pick from the (many) that I have missed, and read those. Check our catalog.

The Little Friend / Donna Tartt 555 pp.

An entirely different story from Tartt's The Secret History, but no less engaging. Harriet Cleves Dufresnes is growing up in small town Mississippi in the 1970s in the long shadow of her older brother's unsolved murder when she was an infant. The murder has ruined her mother, who copes by taking pills and staying in bed, and left her older sister dreamy and fragile. Harriet, on the other hand, is precocious, tough, and determined to solve the case and exact vengeance. The cast of characters here includes a snake-charming preacher, an oily car salesman, a psychotic ex-con, and an ex-con who may or may not have a heart of gold.