It's been a busy but rather lonely summer here at Casa Kittling, and I sincerely hope that Denis will be home by the time this posts. The poor man's been gone so long that i might find it strange to have another soul in the house with me-- but I'm sure I'll adjust within a blink or two. (It's going to take me awhile to stop wanting to hug the stuffing out of him!)
What have I been doing besides putting together flat-pack furniture, clearing out rooms, cleaning, and knitting so much that I'm wearing out my needles? Why, keeping an eye peeled for new crime fiction to read, of course!
Boy howdy, August has a bumper crop of prime reading, and it was extremely difficult to keep any sort of control over the length of my list of choices.
The ones that made the cut are grouped according to their release dates. Their covers and synopses are courtesy of my favorite showroom, Amazon. Now it's time to shut up and show you the list...
=== August 1 ===
Series: #20 in the Owen McKenna P.I. series set in Lake Tahoe.
396 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books.
Synopsis: "Tahoe
Detective Owen McKenna is heading to a meeting when he finds a lost,
deaf girl. McKenna learns that the girl, Camille Dexter, is 8 years old.
Her grandfather, Charlie Dexter, left her to wait for him, but he has
disappeared.
McKenna
calls Sergeant Jack Santiago. They discover Dexter's body crushed by a
recently-cut tree. The cause of death appears to be suicide. But as
McKenna investigates, the details don't make sense, and he learns of
other apparent suicides that are suspicious.
McKenna's
girlfriend Street Casey is driving with Camille Dexter when someone
runs them off a steep mountain road. They miraculously survive.
When
McKenna finds a common thread to all the deaths, that connection leads
to the girl, the only person in the group who's still alive. McKenna
thinks he knows the killer's identity, the meanest, most twisted man
he's ever met. But before McKenna can find him, the man kidnaps
Camille..."
=== August 2 ===
Author: Ramona Emerson
Standalone thriller with a strong supernatural element.
312 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books.
Synopsis: "Rita Todacheene is a forensic photographer working for the
Albuquerque police force. Her excellent photography skills have cracked
many cases—she is almost supernaturally good at capturing details. In
fact, Rita has been hiding a secret: she sees the ghosts of crime
victims who point her toward the clues that other investigators
overlook.
As a lone portal back to the living for traumatized
spirits, Rita is terrorized by nagging ghosts who won’t let her sleep
and who sabotage her personal life. Her taboo and psychologically
harrowing ability was what drove her away from the Navajo reservation,
where she was raised by her grandmother. It has isolated her from
friends and gotten her in trouble with the law.
And now it might be what gets her killed.
When
Rita is sent to photograph the scene of a supposed suicide on a highway
overpass, the furious, discombobulated ghost of the victim—who insists
she was murdered—latches onto Rita, forcing her on a quest for revenge
against her killers, and Rita finds herself in the crosshairs of one of
Albuquerque’s most dangerous cartels. Written in sparkling, gruesome
prose, Shutter is an explosive debut from one of crime fiction's most powerful new voices."
=== August 4 ===
Standalone thriller set in Australia.
384 pages
*UK Release
Synopsis: "Twenty years ago, Charlie Deravin's mother went missing, believed
murdered. Her body has never been found, and his father has lived under a
cloud of suspicion ever since.
Now Charlie has returned to the
coastal town where his mother vanished, on disciplinary leave from his
job with the police sex-crimes unit, and permanent leave from his
marriage. After two decades worrying away at the mystery of his mother's
disappearance, he's run out of leads.
Then the skeletal remains
of two people are found in the excavation of a new building site... and
the past comes crashing in on Charlie."
Series: #26 in the D.I. Wesley Peterson police procedural series set in England
368 pages
*UK Release
Synopsis: "Serpent's Point in South Devon is the focus of local legends. The
large house on the headland is shrouded in an ancient tale of evil, and
when a woman is found strangled on the coastal path DI Wesley Peterson
is called in to investigate.
The woman had been house-sitting at
Serpent's Point and Wesley is surprised to discover that she was
conducting an investigation into unsolved missing persons cases. Could
these enquires have led to her murder?
While the case takes
Wesley to Yorkshire and the Cotswolds, archaeologist Neil Watson is
making a dramatic discovery of his own in the fields near the house.
When
a skeleton is uncovered, the pressure rises to find a killer, and
Wesley and Neil realise that Serpent's Point holds more secrets than
anyone could have imagined."
Title: The Bookseller of Inverness Author: S.G. MacLean
Historical standalone thriller set in 18th-century Scotland
416 pages
*UK Release
Synopsis: "After Culloden, Iain MacGillivray was left for dead on Drumossie
Moor. Wounded, his face brutally slashed, he survived only by pretending
to be dead as the Redcoats patrolled the corpses of his Jacobite
comrades.
Six years later, with the clan chiefs routed and the
Highlands subsumed into the British state, Iain lives a quiet life,
working as a bookseller in Inverness. One day, after helping several of
his regular customers, he notices a stranger lurking in the upper
gallery of his shop, poring over his collection. But the man refuses to
say what he's searching for and only leaves when Iain closes for the
night.
The next morning Iain opens up shop and finds the stranger
dead, his throat cut, and the murder weapon laid out in front of him - a
sword with a white cockade on its hilt, the emblem of the Jacobites.
With no sign of the killer, Iain wonders whether the stranger discovered
what he was looking for - and whether he paid for it with his life. He
soon finds himself embroiled in a web of deceit and a series of old
scores to be settled in the ashes of war."
=== August 9 ===
Title: Bark to the Future Series: #13 in the Chet and Bernie series set in Arizona.
320 pages
Synopsis: "When Chet the dog, “the most lovable narrator in all of crime fiction” (Boston Globe),
and his human partner, PI Bernie Little, are approached by a
down-and-out older man with a cardboard sign at an exit ramp, Bernie is
shocked to discover the man is a former teammate from his high school
baseball team. Chet and Bernie take Rocket out for a good meal, and
later, Bernie investigates Rocket’s past, trying to figure out what
exactly went wrong.
Then, Rocket goes suspiciously missing. With
his former teammate likely in danger, Bernie goes back to his old high
school for answers, where much that he remembers turns out not to be
true―and there are powerful and dangerous people not happy with the
questions Bernie is asking.
Bernie soon learns that he
misunderstood much about his high school years – and now, Chet and
Bernie are plunged into a dangerous case where the past isn’t dead and
the future could be fatal."
Title: To Kill a Troubadour Series: #15 in the Bruno Chief of Police series set in France.
320 pages
Synopsis: "Les Troubadours, a folk music group that Bruno has
long supported, go viral with their new number, “Song for Catalonia,”
when the Spanish government suddenly bans the song. The songwriter, Joel
Martin, is a local enthusiast for the old Occitan language of Périgord
and the medieval troubadours, and he sympathizes with the Catalan bid
for independence. The success of his song provokes outrage among extreme
Spanish nationalists. Then, in a stolen car found on a Périgord back
road, police discover a distinctive bullet for a state-of-the-art
sniper's rifle that can kill at three kilometers, and they fear that
Joel might be the intended target.
The French and Spanish
governments agree to mount a joint operation to stop the assailants, and
Bruno is the local man on the spot who mobilizes his resources to track
them down. While Bruno tries to keep the peace, his friend Florence
reaches out for help. Her abusive ex-husband is about to be paroled from
prison and she fears he will return to reclaim their children. Will
Bruno and Florence be able to prevent this unwanted visit? Despite the
pressures, there is always time for Bruno to savor les plaisirs of the Dordogne around the table with friends."
=== August 16 ===
Author: Barbara Nadel
Series: #24 in the Çetin Ikmen police procedural series set in Istanbul, Turkey.
400 pages
Synopsis: "When jeweller Fahrettin Muftugolu is found dead in his apartment
in the Istanbul district of Vefa, it looks like suicide. Searching the
jeweller's home, Inspector Mehmet Suleyman and his team come across a
hoard of extraordinary artefacts including solid gold religious relics
and a mummified human head. But are they real and, if so, who owns these
priceless possessions?
As his colleagues begin their
investigation, Suleyman is distracted by troubles of his own. His
wedding to Gonca Serekoglu is days away, but when Gonca receives her
bridal bedcover from a Roma haberdasher and discovers that it is covered
in blood, she sees this as a curse on their marriage. Suleyman asks his
old friend Cetin Ikmen to help him uncover the truth, but the task is
not that simple...
Meanwhile, as the stories swirling around
Muftugolu become increasingly sinister, the dead man's wife appears,
laying claim to his valuables, and Suleyman is drawn into a dark and
dangerous world of smuggling and savagery . . ."
=== August 18 ===
Title: The Lost Man of Bombay Series: #3 in the Persis Wadia historical police procedural series set in 1950s Bombay, India.
352 pages
Synopsis: "Bombay, 1950
When the body of a
white man is found frozen in the Himalayan foothills near Dehra Dun, he
is christened the Ice Man by the national media. Who is he? How long has he been there? Why was he killed?
As
Inspector Persis Wadia and Metropolitan Police criminalist Archie
Blackfinch investigate the case in Bombay, they uncover a trail left
behind by the enigmatic Ice Man - a trail leading directly into the dark
heart of conspiracy.
Meanwhile, two new murders grip the city. Is there a serial killer on the loose, targeting Europeans?
Rich in atmosphere, the thrilling third chapter in the CWA Historical Dagger-winning Malabar House series
pits Persis against a mystery from beyond the grave, unfolding against
the backdrop of a turbulent post-colonial India, a nation struggling to
redefine itself in the shadow of the Raj."
Series: #2 in the Allie Burns historical series set in Glasgow, Scotland.
432 pages
*UK Release
Synopsis: "1989. The world is changing, and Allie Burns is still on the front line, covering the stories that count.
Although
Allie is no longer an investigative journalist, her instincts are
sharper than ever. When she discovers a lead about the exploitation of
society's most vulnerable, Allie is determined to give a voice to those
who have been silenced.
As Allie edges closer to exposing the
truth, she travels behind the Iron Curtain, to East Berlin on the brink
of revolution. The dark heart of the story is more shocking than she
ever imagined. And to tell it, Allie must risk her freedom and her life .
. ."
Standalone thriller set in France.
448 pages
*UK Release
Synopsis: "Leyli Maal is a beautiful Malian woman, mother of three, living in a tiny apartment on the outskirts of Marseille.
Her
quiet life as a well-integrated immigrant is suddenly shaken when her
beautiful eldest daughter, Bamby, becomes the main suspect in two
murders linked to a lethal illegal immigration racket.
Is Bamby really involved? And why is everyone desperate to get their hands on Leyli's mysterious red notebook?"
=== August 23 ===
Series: #9 in the Tracy Crosswhite police procedural series set in Washington.
367 pages
Synopsis: "Detective Tracy Crosswhite has agreed to look into the
disappearance of investigative reporter Lisa Childress. Solving the cold
case is an obsession for Lisa’s daughter, Anita. So is clearing the
name of her father, a prime suspect who became a pariah. After
twenty-five years, all Anita wants is the truth―no matter where it
leads.For Tracy, that means reopening the
potentially explosive investigations Lisa was following on the dark
night she vanished: an exposé of likely mayoral graft; the shocking
rumors of a reserved city councilman’s criminal sex life; a drug task
force scandal compromising the Seattle PD; and an elusive serial killer
who disappeared just as mysteriously as Lisa.
As all
the pieces come together, it becomes clear that Tracy is in the midst of
a case that will push her loyalties and her resilience to the limit.
What she uncovers will come with a greater price than anyone feared."
=== August 30 ===
Series: #4 in the Heidi Kick police procedural series set in Bad Axe County, Wisconsin.
336 pages
Synopsis: "A strange religious sect has arrived in Bad Axe County, Wisconsin.
Armed with guns, an enigmatic spiritual leader and his followers set up
their compound in an abandoned storage lot. It’s not long before rumors
start to spread of sadistic rituals and a planned takeover of the local
government. But when one of the followers is found dead in the river,
that’s when full-on panic sets in.
Sheriff Heidi Kick may not
be a fan of the new group, but she is also dismayed by the hostile
reaction of the Bad Axe community. With a murder investigation on her
hands, the situation becomes more complicated when Sheriff Kick finds
out an ex-boyfriend from her youth is out on parole early and looking to
hunt her down. With a tumultuous snowstorm on the horizon, the cult
members are on the verge of freezing, Bad Axe is on the edge of
violence, and Sheriff Kick is just one false step away from losing her
family, her town, and her very life.
By a writer at the height of his powers, Bad Day Breaking is
a thrilling mystery that explores the price paid for following false
leaders and the power we each have to triumph over trauma."
There are so many of my favorite authors in this list that I don't know where to start first! And may I just say that (Arizona lover that I am) I love the cover of Bark to the Future! Weathered sandstone always reminds me of some of my favorite places in the world that are right up in northern Arizona. (Wupatki, Monument Valley, Canyon de Chelly, Lake Powell, Sedona...)
What about you? Does my list include any books that tickle your fancy? Which ones? You know inquiring minds would love to know!
