Ballard and Bosch. Sounds like an accounting firm, or maybe a couple of interior designers. Actually, Renee Ballard and Harry Bosch are two of Michael Connelly’s most appealing and complex series detectives. Introduced in last year’s The Late Show, Ballard works the night shift at Hollywood Station, camping on the beach with her dog during the day. Bosch, the veteran cop of 20-plus books, now works cold cases for the San Fernando P.D., and in the deft procedural Dark Sacred Night (Little Brown, library hardcover), he teams with Ballard to investigate the disappearance of teen Daisy Clayton. The narrative focus alternates between the two rule-benders, both of whom are sidetracked by their own cases. A heist from a dead woman’s house, a porno movie studio operating out of the back of a van, and a run-in with a vicious gang leader tied to Mexican drug dealers end up linking to the cold case and a serial killer. Ballard and Bosch — BOLO for their next adventure.
An English country house during a sultry summer, unreliable narrators harking back to past events, a pair of mysterious lovers, an outsider yearning to belong. Claire Fuller’s involving Bitter Orange (Tin House Books, digital galley) reminds me of one of Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine’s serpentine suspense novels. In 1969, Frances Jellicoe, an unsophisticated 39, spies on the private lives of couple Peter and Cara when they end up sharing quarters in a derelict mansion owned by an American millionaire. Things are not what they seem, to say the least, and there’s a creeping dread as Frances recalls that summer from a hospital bed years later. There will be blood. And a body.
Speaking of English country houses, Liane Moriarty cheerfully channels Agatha Christie in Nine Perfect Strangers (Flatiron Books, purchased hardcover), although she subs a posh Australian health resort for the requisite house. Romance writer Frances Welty, whose career and love life are trending downward, is among the nine people hoping to transform their lives in 10 days. Others taking part in the regimen of diets, meditation, facials, etc. include an aging jock, a divorced mom, a grieving midwife and her schoolteacher husband. All have their secrets and all have their say, as does the mysterious Masha, the Russian executive running things. For a long time, not much happens except a lot of mindful living, but then the plot takes a turn. In fact, it goes completely off the rails, but I kept on flipping pages so fast I got a paper cut, although not as bad as the one Frances suffers from early on.
V.I. Warshawski is all in for friends and family in Sara Paretsky’s Shell Game (HarperCollins, digital galley). First, the Chicago detective’s friend Lottie asks for help with her great-nephew Felix, a Canadian-born engineering student who is mixed up in the murder of a man of Middle Eastern descent. Then, Harmony Seale, the niece of Warshawski’s ex-husband, attorney Richard Yarborough, shows up from Portland looking for her missing sister Reno. Richard had helped Reno find a job with a sleazy pay-day lender, but claims to know nothing about her present whereabouts. The intrepid sleuth doesn’t take kindly to slammed doors and unsubtle hints to mind her own business, which is why she’s soon sorting out corporate intrigue, insurance scams, Russian mobsters, ISIS supporters and the blackmarket trade in priceless antiquities and artwork. The case is complicated and timely; both the pace and detective are relentless.
First, a young curator at a Colorado history museum vanishes on an overnight camping trip. Next, a valuable historical diary disappears from the same museum before a fund-raising gala. Then there’s a murder at the museum after hours. Detective Gemma Malone stays more than busy in Emily Littlejohn’s satisfying third mystery, Lost Lake (St. Martin’s Press, digital galley). A new mother, Malone continues to be an appealing character as she untangles a family’s secret history and the rumored curse of the icy, isolated lake.
If you’re looking for a taut legal thriller, you won’t find it in John Grisham’s The Reckoning (Doubleday, digital galley). There is some courtroom drama, but this is one of Grisham’s slice-of-life Southern sagas set in Clanton, Miss., place-centered and character-driven. In 1946, war hero and family man Pete Banning walks into a church and shoots the pastor dead. “I have nothing to say,” Banning tells the sheriff, and he stubbornly refuses any explanation to family, friends, judge and jury. It takes years — and flashbacks to World War II and the town’s history — before Grisham allows a reckoning with the truth.
Lou Berney’s noir-tinged November Road (HarperCollins, digital galley) is a crime novel, a road novel and a love story, all taking off from the November 1963 Kennedy assassination. Frank Guidry is a New Orleans mob fixer on the run from a hired killer when he stops to help Oklahoma housewife Charlotte Roy and her two kids heading for a new life in California. Stopping is Frank’s first mistake, falling for Charlotte is his second. Don’t make a mistake and miss this one.
On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever 