Book Reviews by vicki rock

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is awakened from a deep sleep by a telephone call. The caller says “There’s a body in Lost Nation.”

“Where?” demands Gamache as he scribbles on the pad by his bed. But the line goes dead.

The head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec has no idea where Lost Nation is, or who woke him at his home in Three Pines. What he does know is that the man was terrified and the voice was oddly familiar. And the caller had Gamache’s private number.

The call came from Clara Morrow’s phone number. She is a friend and neighbor of the Gamaches. And so Gamache is thrust out of a deep sleep and into the surrounding forests in search of the mythical Lost Nation and a body.

When Gamache and his team of Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir, his second-in-command, and Inspector Isabelle Lacoste find both, the situation only grows more bizarre. The unidentified dead man is dressed in clothing from an era more than a century ago. He’s lying on top of a grave in a long-abandoned cemetery.

Soon, Gamache and his team are investigating ties to a forgotten shipwreck, lost documents belonging to a female Victorian botanist, a mysterious plant not seen in a century and a firm that specializes in genealogical research.

This is the 21st in one of the best series being written. The characters are excellent and all the strands of the story: crime, history and botany, are expertly woven together. There is a lot of depth in Louise Penny’s novels and this is one of her best.

I rate it five out of five stars.

Batter Gray has been called a thief, a rebel, an upstart, a traitor and an inmate. Batter is in his early twenties and lives in New York City. It is the 1980s.

He had an identical twin, but his brother was stillborn. Batter is named after his mother’s heroic dog. His mother, Rainey, is a professional type face designer, and his father, John, a historian at a community college.

Batter has always loved poetry. As a child he wanted to be a poet. His parents are concerned about his future. He attends a liberal arts college. When Batter was 11 a teacher showed him a poetry anthology published by a company called Peck & Peck, but he was later told that the company went out of business.

After college graduation, Batter is working two part-time jobs when he by chance finds the Peck & Peck building. The publisher is back in business. He gets a job, but it isn’t what he expected. And how does Batter end up being an inmate?

The multi-layered plot and the characters are definitely quirky. The plot reveal about the dog is laugh-out-loud funny. At times the reader will wonder where this absurd story is going, but it is enjoyable.

Bonnie Garmus is also the author of the bestselling “Lessons in Chemistry,” published in 2022.

I rate it four out of five stars.

Harlem, New York. Luke Cage is walking while on a cellphone call with his girlfriend, Jessica Jones, when he witnesses a man jumping through a window. Both Luke, known as the “hero from New York,” and Jessica have super powers. He stops to confront that man, Polar Bear Man, who is wrecking cars.

While that is going on, Luke missed a call from Majestic, Virginia, where his aunt, Letty Lucas, and his cousins, Raymond and Rashon, live. Rashon is dead. Rashon was working at a factory that manufactures medical devices. Luke was recently hired to investigate that factory and had asked Rashon to snoop around.

The sheriff’s department says Rashon’s death is an open investigation. Luke doesn’t believe they are investigating.

“Truth to Power” is part of the Marvel Crime series that began with “Breaking the Dark” by Lisa Jewell and “Enemy of My Enemy” by Alex Segura. It can be read as a stand alone novel.

While I liked S.A. Cosby’s earlier crime novels, I couldn’t get into this one. There is a lot of fighting and Marvel-style superhero action. I found his earlier books to be page-turners, but this one seems to be slow moving.

I rate it three out of five stars.

Jay Turner’s mother died and he is returning to their Boston townhouse to clean it out for sale. He has no siblings and his mother raised him alone. Jay is now 29 and has been a history teacher for six years.

His mother was also a historian and an author and editor. She had donated a valuable book from 1477 to a museum in Philadelphia. The book had been commissioned by Vlad Tepes of Wallachia, the feudal lord known as Dracula. She warned Ju about dangers associated with the book.

Jay is clearing out her possessions and finds a partially burned scrap of newspaper bearing the name “Gael Brogan.” Soon after, a deliveryman leaves behind a package containing a small antique volume bound in leather. Did the museum return the donation?

He sets out to learn more about Gael Brogan, a prominent nineteenth-century actor whose last and most famous role was based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. As Jay begins to dig deeper he gets the help of a grad student named Rhiannon.

This isn’t marketed as a sequel to Elizabeth Kostova’s earlier novel, “The Historian,” but Jay Turner is the son of one of the main characters in “The Historian.” The main problem with “Mystery Play” is how many plot threads are extraneous and are just dropped. There are fascinating ideas here, but many result in dead ends. And at almost 600 pages, it drags. I remember enjoying “The Historian.” While hardcore Dracula fans may enjoy “Mystery Play,” I was disappointed.

I rate it three out of five stars.

Out on the moor, in the snow, a white house stands beneath an electrical pylon. It is a house full of memories and of old things. The house is named Kirkhill.

An unnamed middle-age man, who recently went through a bitter divorce, moves into the two-bedroom house sight unseen. He is surprised to find that his cellphone doesn’t work there. There are some of the previous owners’ belongings still inside. Then in the middle of the night, the landline rings, but when he picks up the receiver the line is dead.

The man goes into town, but nobody will talk about the previous owners of the house. When he returns to Kirkhill, he hears a sound coming from the pylon, like someone saying “I know what you did.” He finds a diary kept by a woman, Caroline Sanderson, who talks of her husband, Arthur. He then finds Arthur’s journal. They had two children, Greg and Lucy, and a dog, Bailey.

And he keeps finding new tennis balls. Then a young woman comes to the house, looking for her lost dog. She says her name is Lucy and that Caroline and Arthur killed themselves. The man becomes obsessed with Caroline.

This is an intense psychological fast-paced thriller. The narrator alternates between logic and terror until he no longer knows what is real. Readers will wonder if he is having a mental breakdown or if the house is haunted or something else. They will race through it to find out the answer.

I rate it five out of five stars.

Livia Cable has made her peace with her life in the Tennessee farm country where she grew up, until a shocking phone call from Sigurd, an old lover whom she hasn’t seen in over 20 years, shakes her.

Her husband, Charlie, is a farmer. Livia teaches piano and plays for several churches. She met Sigurd in 1989 when she was in college. He was older and a union organizer. At the time she was living with Jon Link. She was then Livia Bohusz, a music conservatory student estranged from her family.

Her brother, Cyrus, died of suicide when he was 17 and she was 11. Her mother was dismissive of her musical abilities and was abusive. Her father was a dairy farmer and a rural mail carrier. She’s known Charlie since childhood.

The story goes back in time. When Jon Link is accepted into a summer program in Munich, Germany, he and Livia break up. Sigurd also moves on. Then Livia’s hand is injured and she can no longer play at a professional level. She returns home. Livia’s decision if she should meet with Sigurd means confronting her past and deciding if reopening it will heal her or upend her current life.

Barbara Kingsolver won the Pulitzer Prize in 2022 for “Demon Copperhead.” I enjoyed “Partita” even more. Barbara Kingsolver weaves a deeply moving story of passion, regret, music and life in rural communities. I had to look up what the title means. A partita is a musical composition, typically for a solo instrument, that consists of a series of dance-inspired movements.

I rate it five out of five stars.

Paul and Chelsea Tanner are on their honeymoon in Paris. Chelsea has posted a daily schedule of their trip. They don’t realize that someone has been watching them since the third day.

Chelsea did a semester in Paris while she was in college and is proficient in French. Paul, who graduated from the Naval Academy, now works for the Department of Justice. They are on a day trip in a private car driven by Malik Farro when Malik is drugged and they are kidnapped.

Chelsea’s father, Lowell Clayburn, is an orthopedic surgeon. Her mother, Justine, becomes concerned when a day goes by without a text from them. She calls Fritz and Linzy Tanner, Paul’s parents, who also haven’t heard from the couple. Then Chelsea’s parents get a video showing Chelsea with a $2 million ransom demand. They call their son, Sam, for help.

Fritz Tanner works for a company that is a defense contractor. Sam goes to his office to tell him of the kidnapping. Lowell and Justine decided they won’t call the FBI, and that Lowell will go to Paris to pay the ransom. Fritz and Linzy then get a similar ransom call.

Although they pay the ransoms, Chelsea is released but Paul isn’t. When Lowell and Chelsea return to the U.S., their flight is met by two FBI agents. Then Rea Claire Russo and Stuart Nash are recruited to be the bait in an elaborate CIA rescue operation.

It is intense. The main characters are good, but my problem with the novel is the number of characters who are introduced but either play minor roles or are not heard from again. The lead up to the rescue is a little long, with the rescue itself shorter. Still, John Grisham’s many fans will enjoy it.

I rate it four out of five stars.

A scorching heatwave marks the start of the summer in England. Hannah Armstong and Lottie Cauldwell, both 17, travel from London to Hannah’s family’s summer home in North Devon to celebrate the end of their exams.

A few days later, Detective Inspector Matthew Venn is called to investigate. Lottie’s body was found in the swimming pool and Hannah is missing. Hannah’s father, Paul, is a doctor who became a member of Parliament. He and his wife, Cath, found the body. Lottie was an Olympic-hopeful swimmer, so it is unlikely that her death was accidental. Her parents, Elaine and Keith Cauldwell, are divorced. He is a movie director and is in America.

Detective Sergeant Jen Rafferty and Detective Constable Ross May are also at the scene. The Armstrongs tell police that there are social media posts by people who resent their wealth. Hannah was dating a local guy, Jacob Brennan, who is a few years older. Geoff Kinzalow, a journalist, and his wife, Karen, both American, are glamping at the Brennan’s farm.

Venn wonders if a disgruntled local lashed out or if Hannah was targeted because of her father. Or did Lottie anger someone? The characters are finely drawn and the pacing is very deliberate. Ann Cleeves connects all the plot threads in the end. It is a thoughtful addition to this series and it is a fast read.

I rate it five out of five stars.

Steve Wheeler is a retired police officer, now living in a small village in England. He has an investigations agency, We Solve Murders, along with his daughter-in-law, Amy Wheeler, and author Rosie D'Antonio, who is bankrolling the business.

They haven’t had a murder to solve yet. Steve knows that if they don’t get a case soon, Amy will go back to her old private security job.

Then Vern Blackwood, who lives in a private villa in the Italian hills, finds the murdered body of his bodyguard, Esteban. He finds a threatening note on the body. Vern can’t go to the police. He thinks that Jakob Eriksson is finally making a move on Vern's territory.

Steve is on his way to Rosie’s latest book launch in London. The book is “And the Devil Blinked First.” Amy is acting as Rosie’s bodyguard. Rosie is on a television show where she mentions the agency. Vern sees the show and calls We Solve Murders for help.

Vern tells them that he works in an industry populated with criminals. He says he sells online vitamins that were made in China. He says that Jakob Eriksson has murdered others in the fake prescription industry. He suggests they investigate Jakob Eriksson, Tommy Griffin and Vern’s ex-wife, Georgie Glazier.

Then Felicity Woollaston, the detective agency’s office manager, and Tony Taylor, Steve’s friend, are attacked while leaving a restaurant. They are told to quit investigating Jakob Eriksson.

This is the second in this series by Richard Osman, who also wrote The Thursday Murder Club series. The characters have good chemistry. The book is filled with humor and pop culture references. The plot does require suspension of disbelief.

I rate it four out of five stars.

On September 11, 2001, when Molly Fitzgerald was only two months old, her mother, Eloise Ambrose, went to an appointment at the World Trade Center and never came home. More than three thousand children lost a parent that day.

Now an adult, Molly runs the Rhode Island Department for Emergency Preparedness. She is married to Jesse Fitzgerald, a detective with the Providence Police Department. He is the state’s polygraph expert.

Jesse’s sisters’ story was the Jodi Picoult novel “My Sister’s Keeper.” His sister, Anna, 13, sought medical emancipation from her parents after years of medical procedures so she wouldn’t be forced to donate a kidney to her sister, Kate, who had acute leukemia.

Molly’s father, Adam, is now married to Evie, who was her mother’s best friend, and Molly and her stepmother are close. Then something unexpected upends their lives. They learn that even emergency preparedness experts can’t be prepared for everything.

“Hollow Bones” is about family, friends and what someone in the novel calls “radical kindness.” It is one of Jodi Picoult’s best novels, and is expertly plotted, but if you haven’t read “My Sister’s Keeper” you may want to read that first because “Hollow Bones” reveals details about it. Jodi Picoult does a great deal of research for her novels and her plots and characters are outstanding.

I rate it five out of five stars.

When former crime correspondent turned war reporter, then prisoner of war, Harry Flynn returns to Britain from Singapore in 1946, he takes a quiet office position. His job is to write anything from wedding invitations to advertising posters.

He is eating lunch one day when Gerald Barry, his old boss at the newspaper, sees him. Barry offers him a job with Festival of Britain, a government-funded project aimed at celebrating the nation’s creativity and ingenuity.

Fast-forward to 1951. The Festival of Britain launches in a few weeks. One evening, Flynn goes out for drinks with Delphine Dubois, a Frenchwoman, who works in the home and garden section of the festival. The next morning, Flynn doesn’t remember much about the evening, but he has a black eye. And Delphine doesn’t come to work. She is missing.

Flynn becomes the suspect in her disappearance and possible murder. He was the last person to see her alive, yet he has no memory of the evening they spent together. As evidence against him mounts, Flynn begins to wonder if he might actually be guilty. Then his ex-wife’s daughter, Veronica, 13, is suddenly left in his care when her mother goes on a trip. Veronica is fond of murder mysteries.

The story seems to take a long time to really get going. The story of the festival and the mystery don’t quite mesh together. I usually like Kate Atkinson’s novels, but this one just didn’t work for me.

I rate it three out of five stars.

By the 1950s, Cambridge, Massachusetts feels far removed from the legendary witch trials that marked its early days as a colony.

Ava Abbott is from the small town of Genesis, Maine. Her parents keep her isolated except for school and want her to stay after she graduates to work in the family orchard. But her science teacher convinces her to apply to Radcliffe College. She is accepted and is offered a scholarship. Her parents allow her to go.

There she meets Lauren Bell, her opposite in every way. Lauren is a rebel from a wealthy and well-established Cambridge family. She has long wanted to be a member of the Lilith Society, a secret organization of witches at Radcliffe dating back to colonial times. Members of the Bell family are born with magic.

Lauren and her brother Lionel are four years apart. Their parents were killed in an accident in Greece when Lauren was nine. They were raised by their grandmother.

Both Ava and Lauren are recruited by the Lilith Society, a secret organization of witches at Radcliffe dating back to colonial times. As they learn more about their legacy, Ava and Lauren form a close bond. Ave gets a waitressing job at Harvard’s dining hall where she sees Jamie Mather, a descendent of Cotton Mather, a notorious witch hunter. She and Jamie become obsessed with each other.

While Radcliffe seems like a safe haven, the shadow of McCarthyism looms large, an ever-present threat to the creative and intellectual life in Cambridge. And as girls from the Lilith Society disappear, Ava and Lauren realize the witch trials of the past may not be as deeply buried as they once believed.

This isn’t entirely about magic: it’s about the choices we make, family and friends. It’s about women who are thought to be less than men. I didn’t guess who was behind the disappearances, but the reveal makes sense.

I rate it four out of five stars.