'We Solve Murders' by Richard Osman

We Solve Murders by Richard Osman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Richard Osman’s newest mystery, We Solve Murders, is the start of a new series. Amy Wheeler is a bodyguard, the kind you’d want, particularly if you were in a movie: a martial arts and firearms expert. She travels the world, protecting the rich and famous and is married to a lovely money manager. They give each other freedom to pursue their careers.

Amy’s best friend is her father-in-law Steve Wheeler, a widower and retired police detective. Steve is ensconced in a sleepy English village where he solves small local mysteries and talks into his dictaphone to his dead wife, whom he misses dearly. He loves his routine, particularly Wednesday-night quiz at the pub, and has a cat called Trouble.

Amy is protecting the second-best-selling author in the world, Rosie D’Antonio, when things go awry. She goes on the run with the freewheeling and ebullient Rosie in tow and drafts Steve to help her.

Plot twists ensue for the book’s collection of offbeat characters, most of whom are untroubled by the kinds of things that would scare the heck out of most of us. I loved that about his Thursday Murder Club series, and I love it about this bunch too.

Ossman does a good job of leaving false trails, including having a character employ ChatGPT, but when it finally comes to sorting out who the bad guys were, my reaction was, “of course.”

Maybe that’s how it should be. I had trouble keeping track of characters, but I will blame my issues with the book on the digital galley not playing nicely with my Kindle; I found the formatting issues maddening.

A fine start to a new series by a delightful author. I predict fun times ahead.

'The Mystery Writer' by Sulari Gentill

The Mystery Writer by Sulari Gentill
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sulari Gentill knows how to write page turners, and I appreciate her use of writers as main characters; it gives one a look at the writing life. So I liked The Mystery Writer a lot. I was surprised at the setting -- Australian lawyers in a Midwest city -- and I found the final plot quite contrived. I didn't guess until nearing the end at what was happening, however, and I enjoyed the ride along the way.

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'The Detective Up Late' by Adrian McKinty

The Detective Up Late by Adrian McKinty
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE! The writing is amazing, the characters terrific. I did not guess the ending(s), either. So worth the wait. Thank you, Adrian McKinty, for such a fabulous series.

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'Dead Man's Wake' by Paul Doiron

Dead Man's Wake by Paul Doiron
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Maine Game Warden Mike Bowditch is back. He and his fiancee Stacy Stevens, along with her parents, are at Great Pond for a Labor Day engagement party. The wardens, Mike and his retired father-in-law-to-be Charley Stevens, are observing the tomfoolery on the lake as a speed boat zips by at dusk. Before long, they hear the boat hit something, and Mike and Charley go out to investigate. That was no log the speed boat hit. What looks like a terrible accident leads the wardens to find not one but two bodies, at least one of them strangled.

Mike’s only charge is with chasing down the boat incident, but he’is sure there’s more to the situation than meets the eye and pursues information with his usual doggedness and misadventures.

Paul Doiron has served up another page-turner with Dead Man’s Wake. I love how Doiron has set his books in every wild setting in Maine, this time on a summer lake. At least Mike isn’t in danger of freezing to death in this one! Doiron also serves up a mystery with plenty of twists and twisted characters. Not for the cozy mystery crowd, but a fine, fun read for the rest of us.


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'In the Lives of Puppets' by TJ Klune

In the Lives of Puppets by T.J. Klune
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a delightful, compelling read! Fantasy meets post-singularity, apocalyptic science fiction. I loved the quirky robot characters that made me laugh out loud. (I had to look up the Pinocchio references, which was interesting, but it reminded me as much of The Wizard of Oz.) Add a tremendous amount of heart (no pun intended) and humanity to an epic quest, and you come close.

Some reviewers have said it's too long and the ending is unsatisfying; I think the length is fine, but I agree with the assessment of the ending. I WANT MORE! I want to know more of this world and hopefully it's not as bleak as implied. Maybe TJ Klune will write a sequel? That's not his style so far, but there's room here (as well a neurotic Roomba named Rambo -- love, love, love!).

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'Strangers to Ourselves' by Rachel Aviv

Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us by Rachel Aviv
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Rachel Aviv’s Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us is a rare gem: a non-fiction book I couldn’t put down. Aviv is a staff writer at The New Yorker, and the book reads like a really long New Yorker article. It is intelligent and well-researched yet accessible and compassionate. Tellingly, it is non-prescriptive: readers should not look for pat answers here. Aviv simply tells the stories of half a dozen individuals, mostly women and including herself, for whom modern psychiatry does not suffice and often hurts as much as it helps. Aviv puts special emphasis on the narratives that arise out of diagnoses, and what it means to have mental illness become a main element of one’s story. Highly recommended for anyone interested in mental health.

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'The Woman in the Library' by Sulari Gentill

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sulari Gentill’s The Woman in the Library hooked me immediately. It opens with a letter from an American writer to an Australian one, a chatty note about writing and an offer to review chapters as the Australian author, a successful mystery writer, works on a new book.

Then comes the new book. From the opening sentences it’s clear the Australian author is incorporating things the American correspondent suggests, and even names a character after him. The action of the actual novel takes place pre-pandemic, but the correspondent writes about contemporary affairs, from the wildfires in Australia in 2019 to COVID to race. The ultimate fate of the correspondent becomes a second narrative.

In the main narrative, set in Boston, a writer has gone to the public library to work on her book, taking inspiration from the three strangers at the same table. Then, they hear a woman’s blood-curdling scream. Having met under such circumstances, the four soon become fast friends. Each character is hiding something and acting suspiciously even as they pair off. The writer – an Australian on a fellowship – keeps courting the muse and also practicing subterfuge to support her new lover until the final reveal.

The unusual construction of The Woman in the Library adds a great deal of interest and complexity to what would have been a fine, straight-forward mystery. I appreciated that the secondary narrative allowed for discussion of the craft of writing and real-life events. Sulari Gentill does a fine job throwing doubt on each of the writer’s new friends from the library, and I felt like I was working extra hard to figure out which leads were false, as the correspondent shared his own theories.

I found the main character easy to root for and enjoyed delightful touches such as one of the friends from the library being covered in tattoos and swearing most charmingly. Highly recommended for readers who enjoy a locked-room mystery and can tolerate two interwoven narratives.
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