1 week Ago By Nick Martin
The year is 1872: in an orphanage ravaged by a fire that killed 36 children, evil men of vast power do unspeakable things to a dozen burned orphans, for unknown purposes we can only dread to learn. Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * To continue reading, please subscribe: *$1 will be added to your next bill. After your 4 weeks access is complete your rate will increase by $0.
00 a X percent off the regular rate. The year is 1872: in an orphanage ravaged by a fire that killed 36 children, evil men of vast power do unspeakable things to a dozen burned orphans, for unknown purposes we can only dread to learn. Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? The year is 1872: in an orphanage ravaged by a fire that killed 36 children, evil men of vast power do unspeakable things to a dozen burned orphans, for unknown purposes we can only dread to learn.
In 1894: acerbic Inspector Cutter and naïve Sergeant Bliss — with the help of a feisty journalist and a suave French assassin — follow the trail of murders of retired men who held high stations, while the elite scramble to keep a lid on the murderer’s motives. Paraic O’Donnell’s (Tin House, 336 pages, $39) is heavy, a masterful thriller with terrific characters by an Irish author who promises great things to come. ● ● ● Six grad students chasing masters degrees in fine arts at a budget-strapped English university lie, steal, cheat, backstab, plagiarize, buy others’ work, blackmail, threaten to tell teacher on each other, take secret identities — basically boring daily life in academia.
But are they murderers? Published in September 2024, Janice Hallett’s (Atria Books, 480 pages, $37) is told through emails, chat rooms, essays, directives, memos and minutes as it becomes clear all six students harbour secrets and hidden agendas, as does their supervisor. It’s quite the conniving tale, full of people you wouldn’t want to know in real life, but does get you wondering how many more twists are still to come — and will they be on the exam? ● ● ● A brilliant engineer with a world-changing plan to build super new bridges for the coming steam engines is brutally murdered — setting off skullduggery among the aristocratic gentry of London, French boffins who may be saints or scoundrels, mysterious skulking Bavarians, all blissfully obliviously flaunting their wealth and gene pool superiority in the wake of the French Revolution. It’s somehow all about bringing Napoleon back from Elba to elevate the peasantry above their station, or maybe give the Tsar power over Europe, as soft-on-peasants Lady Charlotte and her husband Lord Wrexford sleuth a growing list of ghastly murders.
Andrea Penrose’s (Kensington, 368 pages, $37) is divertingly entertaining. Will Lady Charlotte employ her secret identities as Magpie, filthy maiden of the slums, and A.J.
Quill, socially scathing cartoonist scourging the upper classes in dreadful lower class publications? ● ● ● Drug-addled aging rocker Billy Diamond wants the boffins at Locard Institute to find out why his Harvard head-on-straight daughter fled to a fix-yourself wellness retreat in the Nevada desert. Forensic scientists Dr. Rachael Davies and Dr.
Ellie Carr are reluctant, until they learn there’s been a murder. Of course it’s a cult, as Ellie soon learns as she goes undercover. Naturally, it’s in the middle of nowhere, no cell service, the charming guru actually very evil — all right, you knew right away where it would be going.
Lisa Black’s (Kensington Books, 341 pages, $38) is a decent fourth entry in the series about the super-scientific sleuthing lab, though we come to the series for more science than we get in this entry. ● ● ● Two women meet and become friends in a Paris condo — police detective Toni, sleuthing body parts left in ice cube machines in hotels favoured by American tourists, and retired Edmonton literature prof Imogene Durant, researching Victor Hugo’s . Imogene is writing about what it’s like to read Hugo’s 1,300-page classic in Paris, all the while being wooed by a hunky Frenchman and wondering what her weird upstairs neighbour is up to.
Neither’s connected to Toni’s case, right? While Janice MacDonald’s (Ravenstone, 344 pages, $24) is labelled an Imogene Durant mystery, it’s 95 per cent love letter to Paris and Hugo that will have you drooling for cafes with exquisite food and wine, and five per cent a mystery. Retired Free Press reporter Nick Martin suggests that books in which beastly villains eventually get theirs, be genre-fied as cathartic murder mysteries. Advertisement Advertisement.
