Sexual harassment. #MeToo. Sexual misconduct. #Time’sUp. Sexual assault. Both Sarah Vaughan’s Anatomy of a Scandal (Atria, e-galley) and Alafair Burke’s The Wife (HarperCollins) are ripped-from-the-headlines domestic thrillers where secrets threaten seemingly picture-perfect marriages and careers. But whose secrets? In Vaughan’s deft procedural, steely British barrister Kate Woodcroft is prosecuting rising political star James Whitehouse, who is accused of raping the young researcher with whom he recently ended an affair. The salacious details — the encounter took place in an elevator at the House of Commons — come as a 
shock to Sophie Whitehouse, who has known James since their days at Oxford. The courtroom dramatics are interspersed with flashbacks to that time, when James was friends with the future PM and Sophie’s study partner Holly was trying to fit in with her posh, privileged classmates. It’s a timely page-turner
, as is writer and law professor Burke’s new book, following her twisty The Ex. In The Wife, Angela Powell is thrust into the spotlight when her college professor and media darling husband Jason is accused of sexual misconduct, first by an intern and then by a woman who later goes missing. The revelations just keep on coming as NYPD detective Corrine Duncan investigates crimes past and present involving both Angela and Jason.
If you think long winter nights are made for mystery books and movies, you’ll want to take a look at The Woman in the Window (HarperCollins, e-galley). First-time novelist A.J. Finn — the pseudonym of a publishing insider — takes his cues from classic noir flicks like Gaslight and Rear Window, both of which inform the crafty tale about an agoraphobic child psychologist. Anna Fox, the most unreliable of narrators, hasn’t left her Manhattan townhouse in months, peering at her neighbors through a camera lens. When she witnesses a stabbing in the house across the street, no one believes her, and well, yes, she had been drinking. Still, there’s something off about an angry husband, a troubled schoolboy, the taciturn tenant in the basement. Add in a cat, a skylight and a snowstorm. The first big twist didn’t surprise me, and I caught on to another just ahead of poor, paranoid Anna. It’s a doozy, though. Can’t wait to see what Finn cooks up next.
Crime fiction readers know a novel named Robicheaux (Simon & Schuster) can come only from the pen of James Lee Burke. He introduced New Iberia, La. sheriff’s detective Dave Robicheaux in The Neon Rain more than 30 years ago, and this is the 21st book in the series. Robicheaux is a stand-up guy on the side of the innocents, but he’s also an alcoholic who can fall off the wagon, haunted by his memories of war, fallen soldiers and lost loves. It’s also possible that he may have murdered the man who accidentally killed his wife Molly in a car wreck, but there’s plenty of other trouble to go around. Much of it involves his old partner Clete Purcel, who has gotten tangled up with silver-tongued Senate candidate Jimmy Nightingale, who is in cahoots with career criminal Big Tony Nemo. The latter would like to make movies out of reclusive writer Levon Broussard’s Civil War novels, while Nightingale has his eyes on Broussard’s wife. The writing is often lovely and lyrical, the plot is intricate and blood-stained. (And yes, Robicheaux’s daughter Alafair is named after Burke’s own daughter, who also knows her way around a mystery. Witness The Wife, reviewed above.)
Louisa Luna introduces odd, bad-ass bounty hunter Alice Vega in Two Girls Down (Doubleday, digital galley), a fast-paced variation on the missing kids theme. Single mom Jamie Brandt leaves 10-year-old Kylie and 8-year-old Bailey in a strip-mall parking lot while she ducks into K-Mart to buy a birthday present, but finds her daughters gone when she returns. Her wealthy aunt hires Vega to help in the small-town police investigation, but the cops aren’t interested in the outsider’s reputed skills at finding people, so the enigmatic Vega teams with ex-cop turned PI Max Caplan. It’s an unlikely partnership, but the divorced father of a teenage daughter makes a good foil for loner Vega, who has a hacker on call to feed her info on the family, the cops and multiple suspects. False leads have the hunt for the sisters going down to the wire, and the suspense is killing. Come for the plot, stay for the characters.
On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever 