Book Reviews by vicki rock

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.

Carl Mørck has retired as the head of Copenhagen Department Q. He is at a book promotional event for his second book when a woman approaches him and asks to speak in confidence.

She works at the Heath and Human Care Administration and came across an answering machine with a disturbing recording. She plays it for Carl. Mørck turns it over to his former colleagues, who are struggling to keep the cold case department up and running on their own.

Detective Constable Rose Knudsen and civilian assistant Hafez el-Assad are still with Department Q. Terje Ploug is the chief of homicide who brings in a new transfer, Helena Henry, a Frenchwoman who throws herself into the investigation

When the team realizes that the audio recording might shed new light on a supposedly open-and-shut murder-suicide case from four years earlier, suddenly everything they thought they knew is called into question.

Meanwhile, a spurt of seemingly random violence—an explosion off the coast of Jutland, a young woman shot dead in Copenhagen—leads the Department Q team to investigate a possible connection to a different long-ago event.

At first this novel is complicated with the number of attacks, but as the plot becomes more clear it also becomes more intense. The reader knows who is behind the attacks, but doesn’t know the motive right away. Carl isn’t as prominent in this novel as he is in the others in the series, but the other characters are good. It can be read as a stand-alone work.

It is unusual to see three people listed as authors. The publisher has said that for this continuation of the Department Q series, Jussi Adler-Olsen has teamed up with criminal experts Stine Bolther and Line Holm. Bolther is a specialist on matters relating to emergency services and Holm is an investigative journalist.

I rate it four out of five stars.

San Francisco Police Homicide Inspector Raquel Laing was adopted at nine by Tom and Emma Laing. She still lives with her adoptive sister, Dee, an online investigator for international organizations. Al Hawkin, Raquel’s mentor, is now semi-retired and works in the cold case unit.

Ten months earlier, Dee considered doing an online DNA test. She was 14 when Raquel was adopted. Then a search into her family’s ancestry throws Dee into her own world of turmoil.

Early one morning, Raquel and her partner, Pam Fawcett, are called to a homicide. The victim is Gilbert Gallegos, a drug dealer. After the killer is identified, Raquel is removed from Homicide and put onto the Cold Case Unit. On the one hand, Cold Case lets her work with Al Hawkin. On the other, it leaves her free to look at some facts about her past.

This is the second in this series. It is a fast read and the characters are good, but I like Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series better.

I rate it four out of five stars.

The last time we saw the women of “Big Little Lies” — Madeline, Celeste, Jane, Renata and Bonnie — their children were in kindergarten. They live in a coastal town north of Sydney, Australia.

In “Big Little Truths,” 10 years have passed and the children attend Pirriwee High School. When the principal, Dr. Ferdinand Seawright, receives a severed finger in the mail, word quickly spreads. Anna Kennard, head of science, says it is real. Detective Chief Inspector Adrian Quinlan is sent to investigate.

Madeline Mackenzie is divorced from Nathan Carlson. They have a son, Fred, and a daughter, Abigail. She and her second husband, Ed, have a daughter, Chloe. Bonnie is now married to Nathan and they have a daughter, Skye. Jane and Tom Chapman have a son, Ziggy. Celeste Wright has twin sons, Max and Josh. Her husband, Perry, is dead. Renata Kline has a daughter, Amabella. She is divorced. The twins and Ziggy are half-brothers.

But the women have other things to worry about. Celeste’s mother-in-law, Mary-Louise, is behaving oddly, Madeline is facing perhaps the biggest challenge of her life, Jane is at an impass in her marriage and Bonnie has realized there’s only so much solace in yoga. Only Renata is living her best life.

When a stranger begins lurking around the school and asking questions, the women must finally face the truth with themselves, each other and their kids. The chapters about the women are interspersed with transcripts of the kids talking with a counselor. The reader doesn’t know why the kids are seeing a counselor until near the end.

Liane Moriarty creates characters who are so believable they could easily be someone you know. You don’t have to read “Big Little Lies” first because the author weaves in the back story. It’s good to see how the different dynamics play out between the women and their families. On top of that, it is a well-crafted and suspenseful plot.

I rate it five out of five stars.

It is October of 1896. Private investigators Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn are told that Barker’s longtime nemesis, Sebastian Nightwine, previously believed dead, is alive and in London. Barker’s cook, Etienne Dummolard, who also owns a restaurant, saw Nightwine.

Dummolard tells Barker, then he and his wife flee to France for safety. Barker advises Llewelyn to send his wife, Rebecca, and their daughter out of London, too.

Meanwhile, Dr. James Cantlie arrives at Barker’s office. His friend, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, is missing. Yat-Sen, a would be reformer and revolutionary, is running away from China's Imperial Qing Secret Service, who has placed a bounty on his head for his political activities. Cantlie hires them to find the missing Sun Yat-Sen.

This is the 17th in the series. The author has a writing style that brings readers into the well-paced story. The relationship between Barker and Llewelyn, who is the narrator, is good. And of course, Dr. Sun Yat- Sen was a real person who founded the Republic of China and served as its first president. This is a well-written and entertaining series, but you can read “For Services Rendered” as a stand-alone novel.

I rate it four out of five stars.

Cork O’Connor is the former sheriff of Tamarack County, Minnesota. He is now a private investigator in Aurora. His son, Stephen, and grandson, Waboo, have visions. Waboo, 7, is troubled because he had a vision of a wolf eating his grandfather’s heart.

Cork’s daughter, Jenny, and her husband, Daniel, who is Native American and is a police officer, are Waboo’s parents. They are all preparing for a family reunion over the Memorial Day weekend. The men will take a canoe trip into the Boundary Waters Area Wilderness. When Stephen and his wife, Belle, arrive, Stephen tells Cork he had a vision. It was the same as Waboo’s.

Cork goes to the outfitters to pick up a rented canoe from his friend, Cordell Bishop, owner of Borealis Outfitter. Cordell isn’t there. His wife, Belle, tells Cork that Cordell is working as a guide for three city men. When Cork’s group arrives at the Boundary Waters, they find Cordell’s vehicle parked. After they canoe to an island off of Strike Lake and set up camp, Stephen finds dried blood.

Cork uses a satellite phone to call Sheriff Marsha Dross, who calls Belle. Belle gives her the names of the men that Cordell is guiding. When she checks, she finds that the names they gave are false. So Cordell may be in danger. Fifteen years earlier, he guided two brothers, Dillon and Declan Kennedy, who were later found to be dangerous criminals.

The key issue in “God’s Country” is what lengths Cork will go to protect others. Overall it is a story of the choices he makes and of survival. It is a good plot, but this one is almost all Cork and little of the other characters. I really enjoy the insights into Native American culture. This is the 21st in the series, but it can be read without reading the others.

I rate it four out of five stars.

Acting Sheriff Emmy Clifton’s mother, Myrna Joy Clifton, dies just six weeks after Emmy’s father, Sheriff Gerald Clifton, was killed in the line of duty. At the cemetery, Emmy’s sister, ex-federal agent Dr. Jude Archer, is comforting Emmy’s son, Cole, who is a deputy.

As Emmy, Jude and Cole leave the cemetery heading for the funeral lunch, they hear gunfire coming from the Vickery family’s house. Allison Vickery was a detective with the Clayville police, but recently retired. She was murdered in her kitchen. Her daughter, Mandy, 16, was shot in the head and is alive. When they break into the house, the killer shoots at Jude, who is wounded. The shooter gets away.

Allison was married to Bill Garrison, who isn’t Mandy’s father. The Garrison family owns a high-end appliance store. Bill is abusive, but Allison would never follow up with the charges against him. And Mandy is seeing Wesley Woodrow, who helps his uncle sell drugs.

This has an excellent plot with multiple twists and small-town intrigue, although I figured out the main plot early on. The characters are outstanding, especially Emmy and Jude. This is the second in the series. It can be read as a stand alone, but one of the big story lines is revealed in the first novel “We Are All Guilty Here.”

I rate it five out of five stars.

It is the first Thursday in August, 1978. In Tallmadge, New York, Mira Winston, 18, drives a golf ball from her tee towards the practice net. The golf ball tears through the net and strikes Kenny Foster, 17, a high school junior who is a caddy, on the temple. He is dead before an ambulance arrives.

At first, everyone agrees this was a tragic accident. Mira, who was accepted to Yale, is so devastated that she refuses to leave for college. But years before the death, Mira used a golf club to break Frank Pendleton’s car window, so she is known to police.

Mira’s father is a lawyer, but not a litigator. Theo Catton, 47, is Mira’s married lover. Then Nick Foster, Kenny’s father, realizes that he saw Mira at a hotel with Theo.

Later, after Mira doesn’t go to college, her parents insist that she get a job. She is hired as an intern at a travel magazine and decides to try to write. She eventually becomes an author. Mira is writing this memoir as an adult.

But when detectives learn how the practice net was torn before Kenny’s death, and a detective remembers Mira’s past act, she is arrested for manslaughter.

I was first unsure of where this story was going until the arrest. The basic theme is what happens when something small causes a death which then impacts multiple lives. The plotting is outstanding and the ending is a surprise. Chris Bohjalian is very good at writing female characters, including teenagers. And he skillfully portrays 1970s attitudes towards women, drugs and alcohol.

I rate it five out of five stars.

Miles Krzelewski and his wife Kate Petrosian live in California with their children Olive and Wesley and dog Giuseppe.

Miles is 12 years late on his Ph.D. on Russian folktales and is a stay-at-home dad. When Kate is offered a one-year visiting professorship at a college in Vermont, they decide to move. Miles thinks he will be able to finish his dissertation there. They agree to housesit for another professor. Kate has multiple sclerosis, which is currently in remission.

Since Miles has a lot of spare time, he gets involved with the school, the parents and other people in town. He then gets involved in researching a local legend.

The pacing is slow and it doesn’t have much of a plot. While other people may enjoy this, it wasn’t a good fit for me.

I rate it three out of five stars.

Nora Breen, a former nun, left her convent in 1954 to find her missing friend in the first book in the series “Murder at Gulls Nest.” She decided to stay at the seaside town of Gore-on-Sea, Kent, England.

In “Murder at the Spirit Lounge,” she is walking one morning when Detective Inspector Hilary Rideout stops his car and asks her to go with him to the home of Dolores Chimes, a famous medium, who recently moved there. Dolores reported a theft, but turned away a junior officer. Dolores conducts her readings in her house in a room that she calls the Spirit Lounge.

Dolores then invites Rideout to her séance planned for that evening. After dinner, Nora is called to Dolores’ home because Nora was formerly a nurse. Dolores was conducting a reading with six guests, including Rideout, when she suddenly died. The next day, a guest at the séance, Harriet Braybrooke, jumps out of a hotel window. When Rideout and Nora go to tell her mother, Lady Constance Braybrooke, of the death, they find that she has also died.

Are these suspicious deaths all murders? Rideout and Nora try to figure out what is happening is before the others who attended the séance also die.

The first half of the novel moves slowly, but then it picks up. I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first in the series, but it is a good cozy mystery. While I figured out the killer before Nora does, the plot is good. The characters are engaging, including the minor ones, and it’s nice that Nora is making a life for herself after leaving the convent.

I rate it four out of five stars.

Eve Yalen is alone with her two children, Lev and Sonya, in Massachusetts while her husband, nicknamed Henry James, pursues his music career in New York City. Eve and her family moved to her childhood home from Boston six months earlier.

She takes the children to a playground beside a piazza. Then is surprised when someone calls her by name. It is Demeter D’Errico, a childhood friend she hasn’t seen in many years. Demeter has her young daughter with her. They call her Persephone for privacy.

Persephone cannot go outside during the day. The sunlight makes her ill. People call those with this illness Emilys after Emily Dickinson. Eve decides to try to help find a cure. She becomes friends with a librarian, a botanist, an actor and someone who writes many letters to the editor.

It is said to be a story of community coming together, but I didn’t get that from this meandering novel. The author tries to incorporate too many themes. I struggled to get through it.

I rate it three out of five stars.

Three Chinese women arrive in Los Angeles in 1870. It is soon after the end of the Civil War. Los Angeles is a city of only about 5,000 people.

Dove, 17, is the daughter of an imperial scholar. Her father arranged her marriage to a much older merchant who lives most of the time in Los Angeles. His first wife lives in China. Dove’s brother accompanies her as far as San Francisco, where he will work.

Petal, 18, is the daughter of peasants. She has grown up hungry and, to her shame, her feet weren’t bound. Her father sells her for money to buy rice seed without telling her. She is sold a second time for prostitution in America.

Fast forward to 1926. Moon, 82, is married to Gene Tong, a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. She is educated and speaks fluent English. But her foot-binding failed and she walks with a limp. As she writes her memoir, she remembers when she met Dove and Petal.

Anti-Chinese sentiment is strong in Los Angeles, and this eventually leads to the Night of Horrors on Oct. 24, 1871, when a dispute between Chinese gangs escalated into a full-blown riot.

Lisa See wrote that this story is inspired by real women in history. It is intense and there is a sense of despair, but more so of determination, friendship and survival. Lisa See has long been a major voice in historical fiction. She brings overlooked histories of women and Asian people to life.

I rate it five out of five stars.