I'm sitting here, looking out the window and wondering when the guy's going to show up to work on the bathroom. He's already ninety minutes late. Top on my list of things that aggravate me is people who don't show up when they say they are going to. I would think it refreshing for someone to come right out and say, "I'm going to show up whenever I get around to it." It would be much more honest, but then, that particular person might find himself out of a job sooner rather than later.
Okay. He's here. While he gets his show on the road, let me get mine started. The following list contains my picks of the best new crime fiction being released during the month of November. I've grouped them according to their release dates, and the covers and synopses are courtesy of Amazon.
Let's see if I've chosen anything that tickles your fancy, too!
=== November 2 ===
Title:
Fogged OffSeries: #3 in the Cyd Redondo cozy series set in England.
237 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books.
Synopsis: "When her client and Jack the Ripper expert Shep Helnikov is found dead
in London, travel agent Cyd Redondo is on the hook for thirty thousand
dollars to return his body home. So when his university offers to cover
the costs if she’ll go in person to collect him—and his Ripper
research—she jumps at the chance, even if it means bringing her wily
uncle along. But no sooner does Cyd arrive in London than her client’s
death by natural causes starts to look most unnatural.
Cyd’s only
hope for recovering the body and vamoosing back to Brooklyn is to find
the killer herself—but she’s thwarted at every turn by Scotland Yard,
Shep’s former girlfriends, a sinister mortuary service, an old nemesis,
and her taxidermist uncle himself. And when Shep’s apartment is
ransacked and a second Ripper expert is found murdered, Cyd knows she’ll
have to solve the crimes fast, before someone books her on a one-way
trip to the morgue."
Title:
Killer ResearchSeries: #12 in the Library Lovers cozy series set in Connecticut.
304 pages
Synopsis: "Spring is livening up Briar Creek after a long, cold winter, and
newlyweds Lindsey and Sully could not be happier. Even though the
upcoming mayoral election is getting heated, everything else in town is
coming up daffodils...until a body is found.
Ms. Cole, a
librarian and current candidate for town mayor, is shocked when she
opens her trunk to discover a murder victim who just so happens to be a
guy she dated forty years ago and the founder of the baking empire
Nana's Cookies. As the town gossip mill turns, a batch of rumors begins
to circulate about Ms. Cole's rebellious youth, which--along with being a
murder suspect--threatens to ruin her life and her budding political
career. But Ms. Cole is one tough cookie who will not go down without a
fight.
Has the campaign for mayor turned deadly? It is up to
Lindsey, Sully, and the rest of the crafternoon pals to see how the
cookie crumbles and figure out who is trying to frame Ms. Cole for
murder and why."
=== November 4 ===
Author: Bella Ellis
Series: #3 in the Brontë Sisters historical mystery series set in England.
352 pages.
*UK Release
Synopsis: "The Brontë sisters' first poetry collection has just been published,
potentially marking an end to their careers as amateur detectors, when
Anne receives a letter from her former pupil Lydia Robinson.
Lydia
has eloped with a young actor, Harry Roxby, and following her
disinheritance, the couple been living in poverty in London. Harry has
become embroiled with a criminal gang and is in terrible danger after
allegedly losing something very valuable that he was meant to deliver to
their leader. The desperate and heavily pregnant Lydia has a week to
return what her husband supposedly stole, or he will be killed. She
knows there are few people who she can turn to in this time of need, but
the sisters agree to help Lydia, beginning a race against time to save
Harry's life.
In doing so, our intrepid sisters come face to face
with a terrifying adversary whom even the toughest of the slum-dwellers
are afraid of . . . The Red Monarch."
=== November 9 ===
Series: #1 in the Inspector Corravan historical series set in Victorian England.
336 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books.
Synopsis: "London, 1878. One April morning, a small boat bearing a young
woman’s corpse floats down the murky waters of the Thames. When the
victim is identified as Rose Albert, daughter of a prominent judge, the
Scotland Yard director gives the case to Michael Corravan, one of the
only Senior Inspectors remaining after a corruption scandal the previous
autumn left the division in ruins. Reluctantly, Corravan abandons his
ongoing case, a search for the missing wife of a shipping magnate,
handing it over to his young colleague, Mr. Stiles.
An Irish
former bare-knuckles boxer and dockworker from London’s seedy East End,
Corravan has good street sense and an inspector’s knack for digging up
clues. But he’s confounded when, a week later, a second woman is found
dead in a rowboat, and then a third. The dead women seem to have no
connection whatsoever. Meanwhile, Mr. Stiles makes an alarming
discovery: the shipping magnate’s missing wife, Mrs. Beckford, may not
have fled her house because she was insane, as her husband claims, and
Mr. Beckford may not be the successful man of business that he appears
to be.
Slowly, it becomes clear that the river murders and the
case of Mrs. Beckford may be linked through some terrible act of
injustice in the past—for which someone has vowed a brutal vengeance.
Now, with the newspapers once again trumpeting the Yard’s failures,
Corravan must dredge up the truth—before London devolves into a state of
panic and before the killer claims another innocent victim."
Series: #4 in the Renée Ballard & Harry Bosch police procedural series set in Los Angeles, California.
400 pages
Synopsis: "There’s chaos in Hollywood at the end of the New Year’s Eve countdown.
Working her graveyard shift, LAPD detective Renée Ballard waits out the
traditional rain of lead as hundreds of revelers shoot their guns into
the air. Only minutes after midnight, Ballard is called to a scene where
a hardworking auto shop owner has been fatally hit by a bullet in the
middle of a crowded street party.
Ballard quickly concludes that
the deadly bullet could not have fallen from the sky and that it is
linked to another unsolved murder—a case at one time worked by Detective
Harry Bosch. At the same time, Ballard hunts a fiendish pair of serial
rapists, the Midnight Men, who have been terrorizing women and leaving
no trace.
Determined to solve both cases, Ballard feels like she
is constantly running uphill in a police department indelibly changed
by the pandemic and recent social unrest. It is a department so hampered tia and low morale that Ballard must go outside to the one
detective she can count on: Harry Bosch. But as the two inexorable
detectives work together to find out where old and new cases intersect,
they must constantly look over their shoulders. The brutal predators
they are tracking are ready to kill to keep their secrets hidden."
Title:
A Blizzard of Polar BearsSeries: #2 in the wildlife biologist Alex Carter series set in the Canadian Arctic.
336 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books.
Synopsis: "
Fresh off her wolverine study in Montana, wildlife biologist Alex
Carter lands a job studying a threatened population of polar bears in
the Canadian Arctic. Embedded with a small team of Arctic researchers,
she tracks the majestic bears by air, following them over vast, snowy
terrain, spending days leaning precariously out of a helicopter with a
tranquilizer gun, until she can get down on the ice to examine them up
close. But as her study progresses, and she gathers data on the
health of individual bears, things start to go awry. Her helicopter
pilot quits unexpectedly, equipment goes missing, and a late-night
intruder breaks into her lab and steals the samples she’s collected. She
realizes that someone doesn’t want her to complete her study, but Alex
is not easily deterred.
Managing to find a replacement pilot,
she returns to the icy expanses of Hudson Bay. But the helicopter
catches fire in midflight, forcing the team to land on a vast sheet of
white far from civilization. Surviving on the frozen landscape is
difficult enough, but as armed assailants close in on snowmobiles, Alex
must rely on her skills and tenacity to survive this onslaught and carry
out her mission."
===November 10 ===
Title:
Murder on the PierSeries: #2 in Flora Steele historical series set in England.
270 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books.
Synopsis: "Sussex, 1955: When bookshop owner Flora Steele goes for a walk along
the pier she isn’t expecting to spot a young woman’s body in the stormy
waters below. And she’s shocked to discover the victim is someone she
knows…
Convinced the death was not an accident, Flora persuades attractive local crime writer Jack Carrington to help her find out what really happened to poor Polly Dakers, a popular young woman with a complicated love life, who’d been at the heart of village life in Abbeymead.
Jack
is reluctant to get involved in another murder case at first but even
he can’t deny that Polly’s fall seems fishy. An argument at a party, a
missed hairdresser’s appointment and a red woollen bobble found on the
wooden boards where Polly last stood provide a trail of clues…
As
they grow closer to solving the puzzling mystery, the unlikely pair
stumble upon several surprising secrets about those closest to Polly. A
number of potential suspects begin to emerge. But who really disliked
Polly enough to kill her? Was it Raymond, her jilted first love? Harry, her latest beau? Or Evelyn, Harry’s jealous estranged wife?
As the investigation brings them closer to the truth, Flora is intent on unmasking the killer – but will her stealthy sleuthing lead her down a dangerous path?"
=== November 11 ===
Title:
The Shadows of Men Series: #5 in the Wyndham & Banerjee historical series set in 1920s Calcutta, India.
352 pages
Synopsis: "Calcutta, 1923
When a Hindu theologian is found murdered in his
home, the city is on the brink of all-out religious war. Can the
officers of the Imperial Police Force—Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant
“Surrender-Not” Banerjee—track down those responsible in time to stop a
bloodbath?
Set at a time of heightened political tension,
beginning in atmospheric Calcutta and taking the detectives all the way
to bustling Bombay, the latest instalment in this remarkable series
presents Wyndham and Banerjee with an unprecedented challenge. Will this
be the case that finally drives them apart?"
Title:
Bruno's ChallengeShort Story anthology featuring Bruno, Chief of Police of a small village in southern France.
288 pages
*UK Release
Synopsis: "A bumper collection of delightful stories featuring Bruno, Chief of
Police and France's favourite cop, all set in the beautiful Dordogne
valley and the ravishing Perigord region of the south west. Here is a
landscape of meandering rivers with medieval castles overlooking their
banks, of lush hillsides and spreading vineyards, of delicious local
wines and world renowned cuisine.
With titles like 'The
Chocolate War'; 'The Birthday Lunch'; 'Oystercatcher'; 'A Market Tale'
and 'Fifty Million Bubbles', you may be sure that champagne and
gastronomy will feature as well as cosy crime in 'Dangerous Vacation'.
Bruno strides through these tales, staying calm. settling local disputes
and keeping safe his beloved town of St Denis.
Only on one
occasion does he panic: in 'Bruno's Challenge', his friend Ivan,
proprietor and chef of the town's popular eatery, suddenly collapses on
the eve of a large anniversary dinner, and he asks Bruno to take over
the restaurant. After a few protests followed by some deep breaths, the
inimitable Bruno meets his challenge and saves the day."
===November 18 ===
Title:
Old SinsSeries: #4 i the DI Kelso Strang police procedural series set in Scotland.
336 pages
Synopsis: "On a clear, moonlit night, DCI Kelso Strang hears the unmistakable howl
of a wolf. A disturbing sound, but not the only unsettling thing about
the remote town of Inverbeg, where he is taking a break with an old army
friend.
Sean Reynolds is obsessive about rewilding his Auchinglass
estate and there are rumours that he has taken illicit steps to hurry
that on, much to the anger of local farmers. There are other tensions
too. An elderly lady died some months before, officially in a tragic
stumble off a cliff path, but she was burdened with many secrets and her
closest friend believes it was murder.
When horror strikes in
Inverbeg, Strang fears further retribution is at work and as he gets
closer to uncovering the ugly truth, he finds himself in more danger
than ever before."
=== November 25 ===
Title: Death on the Trans-Siberian Express
Author: C.J. Farrington
Series: #1 in the Olga Pushkin amateur sleuth series set in Siberia, Russia.
336 pages
*UK Release
Synopsis: "Olga Pushkin, Railway Engineer (Third Class) and would-be bestselling
author, spends her days in a little rail-side hut with only Dmitri the
hedgehog for company. While tourists and travellers clatter by on the
Trans-Siberian Express, Olga dreams of studying literature at Tomsk
State University - the Oxford of West Siberia - and escaping the sleepy,
snow-clad village of Roslazny.
But Roslazny doesn't stay sleepy
for long. Poison-pen letters, a small-town crime wave, and persistent
rumours of a Baba Yaga - a murderous witch hiding in the frozen depths
of the Russian taiga - combine to disturb the icy silence. And one day
Olga arrives at her hut only to be knocked unconscious by a man falling
from the Trans-Siberian, an American tourist with his throat cut from
ear to ear and his mouth stuffed with 10-ruble coins. Another death soon
follows, and Sergeant Vassily Marushkin, the brooding, enigmatic
policeman who takes on the case, finds himself falsely imprisoned by his
Machiavellian superior, Chief-Inspector Babikov.
Olga resolves
to help Vassily by proving his innocence. But with no leads to follow
and time running out, has Olga bitten off more than she can chew?"
Any month with a new Renée Ballard/Harry Bosch mystery is a stellar month, but there are plenty of others to be excited about as you saw for yourself. Which ones are already on your own Need-To-Read lists? Which ones did you find out about just now and add to that list? Inquiring minds would love to know!
