1) "Code Name Verity" by Elizabeth Wein
Breaking away from Arthurian legends (The Winter Prince, 1993, etc.), Wein delivers a heartbreaking tale of friendship during World War II.
In a cell in Nazi-occupied France, a young woman writes. Like Scheherezade, to whom she is compared by the SS officer in charge of her case, she dribbles out information—“everything I can remember about the British War Effort”—in exchange for time and a reprieve from torture. But her story is more than a listing of wireless codes or aircraft types. Instead, she describes her friendship with Maddie, the pilot who flew them to France, as well as the real details of the British War Effort: the breaking down of class barriers, the opportunities, the fears and victories not only of war, but of daily life. She also describes, almost casually, her unbearable current situation and the SS officer who holds her life in his hands and his beleaguered female associate, who translates the narrative each day. Through the layers of story, characters (including the Nazis) spring to life. And as the epigraph makes clear, there is more to this tale than is immediately apparent. The twists will lead readers to finish the last page and turn back to the beginning to see how the pieces slot perfectly, unexpectedly into place.
A carefully researched, precisely written tour de force; unforgettable and wrenching. (Historical fiction. 14 & up)
2) "Live By Night" by Dennis Lehane
The acclaimed mystery writer again tries his hand at historical fiction, combining period detail from the Prohibition era with the depth of character and twists of plot that have won him such a devoted readership.
Though this novel serves as a sequel to The Given Day (2008), it can be read independently of Lehane’s previous historical novel and is closer in its page-turning narrative momentum to his more contemporary thrillers such as Mystic River (2001). Its protagonist is Joe Coughlin, the morally conflicted youngest son of a corrupt Boston police official (oldest brother Danny was protagonist of the previous novel and makes a cameo appearance here). One of the more compelling characters ever created by Lehane, Joe is a bright young man raised in an economically privileged Irish household who turned to crime as a teenager because “it was fun and he was good at it.” He’s the product of a loveless marriage, for whom “the hole at the center of his house had been a hole at the center of his parents and one day the hole had found the center of Joe.” Among the ways he tries to fill that hole is through love and loyalty, both of which put him at odds with the prevailing ethos of the gang bosses among whom he finds himself caught in the crossfire. He ultimately builds a bootlegging empire in Tampa, backed by a vicious gang lord whose rival had tried to kill Joe, and he falls in love with a Cuban woman whose penchant for social justice receives a boost from his illegal profits. (“Good deeds, since the dawn of time, had often followed bad money,” writes Lehane.) Neither as epic in scope nor as literarily ambitious as its predecessor, the novel builds to a powerful series of climaxes, following betrayal upon betrayal, which will satisfy Lehane’s fans and deserves to extend his readership as well.
Power, lust and moral ambiguity combine for an all-American explosion of fictional fireworks.
3) "The Last Policeman" by Ben H. Winters
In a pre-apocalyptic world, one detective still keeps watch—but to what end?
The impending impact of asteroid 2011GV1, unaffectionately known as Maia, has given life on Earth only six more months. It’s turned Concord, N.H., into a “hanger town,” a reference to the suicide preference of locals. Rookie Detective Hank Palace is determined to stay on top of his caseload even though many of his old colleagues seem to have cashed in and are bucket-listing it from now on. Enter Peter Zell, or rather exit Peter, whose death is Palace’s latest case. Any other cop would have let this apparent suicide go, but Palace is determined to do his duty when he senses something suspicious about the circumstances. Added to this is Palace’s mess of a little sister, Nico, who knows that Palace may be the only one with the cop chops to track down her missing husband. What’s more interesting than the mystery surrounding Zell’s death is Winters’ vision of a pre-apocalyptic world, one where laws are both absolute and irrelevant and even minor players have major control over what could be a new future. The imminent end of the world doesn’t mean that everyone has shown their hands—just that there’s a lot more at stake if they lose.
A promising kickoff to a planned trilogy. For Winters (Bedbugs, 2011, etc.), the beauty is in the details rather than the plot’s grim main thrust.
4) "Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China" by Paul French
A suspenseful murder mystery set on the eve of the Japanese invasion of old Peking in 1937.
In this deft reconstruction of events from newspaper and police reports, diaries and archives, Shanghai-based historian French (Through the Looking Glass: China's Foreign Journalists from Opium Wars to Mao, 2009, etc.) masterly portrays the graft-ridden milieu of pre–World War II China, where the arrogance of foreigners prevailed. The horribly mutilated body of a young woman, later identified as British schoolgirl Pamela Werner, was discovered at Fox Tower in Peking, on Jan. 8, 1937, to the shock of the foreign community. Initially, French pursues the official Chinese and British police angle, offering a grisly autopsy report and discussions of suspects such as Pamela’s father, ETC Werner, an old China hand and former British consul. Detectives discovered that Pamela had been ice-skating with her girlfriend the night before and failed to make it home on her bicycle by dinnertime, as she had promised her father and cook. Compelling details emerge about the attractive young woman. She was scheduled to leave her school and return to England soon because of untoward advances made by her professor, and she had been courted by several men her father had disapproved of. Still, the official inquest stalled, Peking fell to the Japanese and the case petered out, except that Pamela’s father doggedly took over, offering a reward and hiring his own detectives. Having long lived in Peking, Werner sensed that such a murder had not been committed by Chinese, but by the foreigners who congregated at the watering hole the Grand Hotel des Wagons Lits, and they were not telling the truth. French provides a wealth of historical detail about a vanished era in interwar Peking.
A well-composed, engaging, lurid tale.
5) "The Silence of Murder" by Dandi Daley Mackall
A teenager tries to clear her mute brother’s name when he is accused of murdering the local high-school baseball coach.
Hope Long already had a laundry list of problems before her autistic brother Jeremy was arrested for murder: an abusive, alcoholic mother, a run-down house and no social life to speak of. But true to her name, Hope isn’t letting any of that get in the way of playing amateur detective. Enlisting the help of school outsider T.J. and crush object Chase, who conveniently is also the son of the local sheriff, she looks for evidence that proves selectively mute Jeremy couldn’t have killed the coach he admired and loved. In a tearjerking denouement, Hope reveals what she has learned, resulting in an ending that will surprise no one. While the premise of this overly earnest psychological thriller will intrigue some readers, it suffers from slow pacing and a secondary cast of one-dimensional characters. Hope doesn’t even begin detecting until nearly 100 pages in, and her constant recollections of her brother’s selfless past actions make him appear perfect rather than real. In addition, the mean parents, bumbling defense lawyer and preening prosecutor all play to type, their characters flat.
Pass up this one for one of Judy Blundell’s or Kathryn Miller Haines’ whip-smart girl-centered mysteries instead. (Mystery. 13 & up)
6) "Bent Road" by Lori Roy
Roy’s suspenseful debut novel presents readers with a rich mix of troubled characters planted against the backdrop of a small Kansas farming town and the mysterious deaths of two young girls.
In the turbulent 1960s, Arthur and Celia Scott leave rioting Detroit behind with their three children and move back to Arthur's childhood home in Kansas. His mother, Reesa, and sister, Ruth, still live there, but things have not been going well with Ruth, long married to the drunken bully who once loved their sister, Eve. The fragile blonde Eve died violently many years ago, her body found in the shed on the Scott property. The community’s consensus is that Ray murdered Eve; whether or not the charge is true, her death certainly turned his life to ruins. Soon the family settles in: Arthur and Celia’s oldest daughter meets and falls for a local boy, while young Daniel, their son, struggles to become a man in a town where he has no friends and a father who doesn’t believe in him. Meanwhile, the youngest child, Eve-ee, who like her namesake aunt is both small and fair, finds kinship with her long-dead relative, who left behind a closet of beautiful dresses and a sad statue of the Virgin Mary. When another local girl, also blonde, petite and Eve-ee’s age, disappears and is feared murdered, the Scotts reexamine the circumstances surrounding Eve’s death. Soon Ruth finds herself once again on the receiving end of one of Ray’s beatings, but this time she has Arthur to shield her. Eventually, the Scott family realizes the truth about what happened to Eve, and Ruth deals with the frightening future she faces if she stays with her husband. Roy, a former tax accountant, writes sparingly of the bleakness of life and death on a farm. In her hands, the plot twists and turns, but, in the end, all the pieces fit, although the denouement is unsettling.
This odd, dark and often creepy tale of a dysfunctional community and a family that fits right in will keep readers wondering right until the last page.
7) "Rogue Island" by Bruce DeSilva
The smallest state bursts with crime, corruption, wisecracks and neo-noir atmosphere in DeSilva’s blistering debut.
Someone’s set seven fires in the Mount Hope section of Providence. Arson for profit is all too common in the city’s history, but these buildings were owned by different people and insured by different companies. So Ernie Polecki, indolent Chief Arson Investigator, and his incompetent assistant Roselli, the mayor’s cousin, assume that they’re the work of a firebug. So do the DiMaggios, the vigilante crew who patrol the nighttime streets with baseball bats. But not seen-it-all reporter Liam Mulligan. His festering ulcer, estrangement from his harpy wife Dorcas and romance with his young Princeton-trained colleague Veronica Tang, who won’t have sex with him till he gets tested for HIV, haven’t absorbed all his energy. Shrugging off the insistence of city editor Ed Lomax that he file a story on a dog who ran across the country from Oregon to rejoin his relocated owners (a hilarious episode that shows just how desperate his professional situation is), Mulligan homes in on the developing story. His interest is fueled by the number of interested parties he just happens to be close to—from his prom date Rosella Morelli, now Battalion Chief of the fire department, to his burned-out bookie, Dominic “Whoosh” Zerilli—and by the arsonist’s apparent determination to torch every structure in Rhode Island’s capital. At length the mounting toll includes homes, storefronts, people and Mulligan’s questionable peace of mind. When the lead he’s supplied investigators goes sour and his own life is threatened, he has no choice but to trust the cub reporter he’s been saddled with—the publisher’s son, whom he calls Thanks-Dad—and the mobsters who’d be perfectly willing to set fires themselves, but who draw the line at killing women and children.
Mulligan is the perfect guide to a town in which the only ways to get things done are to be connected to the right people or to grease the right palms.
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