On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever

Let’s hear it for the old guys. No, not Brady and Gronk, although that was pretty super. I’m talking about venerable detectives Arthur Bryant and John May, the stalwarts of London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit in Christopher Fowler’s long-running series. May is the younger, more sauve one. Bryant looks like a tortoise and is brilliant. At the beginning of Bryant and May: Oranges and Lemons (Ballantine, digital galley), it appears  the long-threatened PCU has met its demise. The Kings Cross office has closed, the team disassembled. May is in hospital recovering from a bullet wound, while Bryant has gone walkabout. But then a government official is crushed by a delivery of fruit falling from a produce van, and the incident is bizarre enough to reunite everyone under the watchful eye of a Home Office spy. Also new on the scene is young Sydney, who wants to be the next Bryant. The original cannily connects the crime to the death of a bookseller and a familiar nursery rhyme about London church bells. More murders bear him out, but figuring out the identity of the killer is another thing altogether. Along with droll writing and endearingly eccentric characters, the series is known for the arcane bits of London history that Fowler enfolds in his convoluted plots. In Oranges and Lemons, excerpts of Bryant’s walking tours of the city provide entertaining and essential asides. 

Australian author Jane Harper whisks readers to Tasmania in her new stand-alone The Survivors (Flatiron Books, digital galley/purchased hardcover). When Kieran and his partner Mia return to their childhome home on Evelyn Bay to help his mother move house, they bring with them their baby daughter and conflicted memories of a decade-old family tragedy The discovery of the body of a young waitress on the beach also revives the town’s memory of the storm in which two men drowned and a local girl disappeared. The police soon discover that Kieran’s father, a former teacher now sliding into dementia, was the last person to see both girls. As in her last book, The Lost Man, Harper excels at detailing the complicated dynamics of family ties and friendships, of guilt and grief. Treacherous seaside cliffs and caves, as well as a submerged shipwreck,  provide the atmospheric backdrop for the involving story. 

A narrator with a head injury is about as unreliable as they come. Aarav Rai is that guy in Nalini Singh’s noirish Unquiet in Her Bones (Berkley, digital galley). At 26, the first-time mystery writer has just seen his book turned into a hit film when a car crash sends him back to live with his wealthy father in a New Zealand cul-de-sac. His beautiful mother Nina vanished 10 years ago with a suitcase of her husband’s cash, but even as Aarav nurses a broken foot and migraines with prescription drugs, her bones are discovered in a nearby forest. She’s still in her sleek Jaguar, now buried by lush undergrowth. But the money is missing. Aarav’s quest to discover who killed his mother — the suspects range from his domineering father to neighbors who may have been her lovers or rivals — is hindered both by his fragmented memories of the night she disappeared and his current messed-up mind and paranoia.  He remembers a scream in the night, a slamming door, chilling rain, tail lights. Or does he? 

On a snowy night in 1893 London, a seamstress carries out a mysterious task in an upstairs room and then steps out the high window, falling to her death. Reading this eerie prologue encouraged me to buy The House on Vesper Sands by Paraic O’Donnell (Tin House Books, purchased e-book). I got the Gothic I was expecting, but was surprised by the amusing entertainment that ensued, as if Edward Gorey and Charles Dickens invited Sherlock Holmes for drinks and war stories. The plot is a Victorian mash-up of missing girls and sinister secrets, eccentric aristocrats and unsettling seances. The memorable characters include smart, brusque Inspector Cutter of Scotland Yard; his self-appointed sidekick, university student Gideon Bliss; plucky society reporter and reluctant heiress Octavia Hillingdon, who turns to a marquess nicknamed Elf for the latest gossip; and the elusive Lord Strythe, head of the Spiriters, who supposedly steal the souls of young working women. All in all, a clever winter’s tale that begs for a sequel.

Kelley Armstrong’s Rockton novels are an annual winter pleasure. The sixth in the series, A Stranger in Town (St. Martin’s Press, digital galley) finds detective Casey Duncan and her sheriff boyfriend Eric Dalton rescuing a gravely wounded hiker in the Canadian Yukon. But bringing the stranger inside the borders of the off-the-grid settlement threatens Rockton’s existence as a sanctuary for people needing to escape from the outside world. Armstrong further explores the history of the nomadic “hostiles” who live in the nearby wilderness, their connection to Rockton’s past — and its future.

Former pro snowboarder Allie Reynolds brings her ski cred to her first novel, Shiver (Putnam, digital galley), which will appeal to fans of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, and by extension, Ruth Ware’s excellent One by One and Lucy Foley’s The Hunting Party. Milla accepts an invitation to a remote ski resort in the French Alps, but the expected reunion with four former snowboarder pals turns out to be rigged. No one will admit to stranding them atop the icy mountain where one of their gang was injured 10 years ago and another disappeared. Reynolds alternates the tense present-day narrative with flashbacks to the time when the frenemies were competing on the circuit, trading lovers and indulging in sabotaging pranks. Milla’s chief rival was the beautiful Saskia, whose body has never been found. Shiver…

In December of 1926, Agatha Christie, just beginning to make her name as a mystery writer, disappeared from her country house and was thought to be a suicide or victim of foul play. A nationwide search failed to find the missing woman until she reappeared 11 days later at a spa under an assumed name, alive and well and claiming amnesia. Author Marie Benedict uses this real-life incident as the springboard for her new novel The Mystery of Mrs. Christie (Sourcebooks, library e-book) and proposes an intriguing and plausible scenario. Benedict shifts between the voices of Agatha and her husband Archie to chronicle their lives leading up to the disappearance and during Agatha’s absence. The two marry quickly on the eve of World War I, but Archie is changed by his battlefield experiences. Agatha does her best to keep her selfish husband happy but is hurt by their young daughter’s preference for her father and Archie’s caddish behavior. Archie is having a secret weekend with a girlfriend he plans to marry when his wife disappears. No wonder he’s the chief suspect in the case. It’s satisfying watching Archie protest his innocence, and even more satisfying when he gets his comeuppance. Agatha always was a masterful plotter.