The Overnights
By Ian K. Smith
If you asked Ashe Cayne, he'd say his two favorite things are Shakespeare and golf. If you ask me, Cayne is one of my favorite fictional PIs. Cayne has swagger, style, striking wit and money to spend. Right before TV sweeps week, Cayne is hired to discover who's threatening Morgan Shaw, Chicago's top-rated news anchor. Cayne's investigation collides with a police shooting of an unarmed Black man. Cayne is Black and an ex-cop. He knows "going after a Chicago cop is nothing short of declaring war." He doesn't hesitate. Smith's dialogue-driven plot races to a breathless end. (Amistad, 368 pages.)
Reviewed by Carole E. Barrowman, special to the Star Tribune
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The Big Sugar
By Mary Logue
In her 1880s-set "Sugar," Logue continues her entertaining chronicle of Irish immigrant Brigid Reardon's life, one that's become pretty chaotic. Brigid survived servitude in a St. Paul mansion and a murder conspiracy in Deadwood, S.D. She's finally ready for a wee bit o'peace in her life. It's not to be. While adjusting to being a homesteader in Cheyenne, the "'magic city of the plains,'" Brigid discovers neighbor Ella Bates, hanging from a tree not far from her "soddy," where Ella also had staked a homestead. What happened to Ella? Brigid means to find out. (University of Minnesota Press, 200 pages.)
Reviewed by Carole E. Barrowman, special to the Star Tribune
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Killingly
By Katharine Beutner
Bertha Mellish is a "defiant agnostic." Her roommate, Agnes, wants to be a doctor. She worships "the earthly body" — Bertha's in particular, all the "glories of her." But it's 1897. Instead of building a future, Bertha is missing in lush woods near Mount Holyoke College. The search for Bertha unveils the difficult choices women, LGBT women in particular, made (and make) to survive and to love. Like Margaret Atwood's "Alias Grace," "Killingly" is an evocative novel crafted from an actual historical mystery where, according to Beutner, the subversive elements of a 19th-century women's college are "thoroughly intertwined with oppression." (Soho Crime, 360 pages.)
Reviewed by Carole E. Barrowman, special to the Star Tribune
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The Puzzle Master
By Danielle Trussoni
"Wouldn't you like to experience something so absolutely singular?" a character asks Mike Brink, diagnosed with savant syndrome after a high school football injury. Brink "reroutes his life ... like a river" and embraces his singularity, becoming a famous puzzle master. When he's invited to solve a strange puzzle posed by a convicted murderer, Mike finds it "impossible to walk away." You won't be able to, either. This immersive, brilliant book is a labyrinth of ciphers, cryptograms, logic puzzles, word puzzles, and a doozy of a conspiracy. Wouldn't you like to experience a book so singular? (Random House, 384 pages.)
Reviewed by Carole E. Barrowman, special to the Star Tribune
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In a Hard Wind
By David Housewright
The body of a property developer is found buried near a communal garden in suburban Shoreview. Jeanette Carrell, a neighbor whose garden borders the site, is charged with the murder. Rushmore McKenzie, ex-St. Paul cop and unlicensed PI, reluctantly agrees to investigate as a "favor for a friend of a friend of [his] friend." Carrell claims her threats to kill the developer "were mere utterances of an angry suburban housewife." McKenzie digs beneath a gazebo, uncovering more than he bargained for. Housewright, one of Minnesota's treasured authors, is right on the money with this one. (Minotaur, 320 pages. Out June 27.)
Reviewed by Carole E. Barrowman, special to the Star Tribune
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All the Sinners Bleed
By S.A. Cosby
On the anniversary of his election as the first Black sheriff of Charon County, Titus Crown is faced with the shooting of a high school student who has murdered a popular teacher. Titus "lives in a no-man's land between people who believed in him, people who hated him because of his skin color, and people who believed he was a traitor to his race." From this place, Titus burrows into the shootings, uncovering a serial killer whose crimes bring a long overdue reckoning. Cosby's thriller is Southern Gothic at its most visceral and profound. (Flatiron, 352 pages.)
Reviewed by Carole E. Barrowman, special to the Star Tribune
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Zero Days
By Ruth Ware
Scottish author John Buchan's "The Thirty-Nine Steps" began my love of novels where the protagonist is chased cross-country, forced to survive on wits and wooly blankets. Ware's fast-paced fugitive story made me breathless. Jack (aka Jacintha), a cyber security stress-tester, discovers her murdered husband slumped over his computer in their London living room. Under questioning, Jack refuses a lawyer because it'll be "weird and antagonistic." After a pointed police interview, Jack realizes she's the main suspect. She flees. While off the grid and on the run, Jack pieces together her husband's final days, finding much more than his killer. (Scout Press, 368 pages. Out June 20.)
Reviewed by Carole E. Barrowman, special to the Star Tribune
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The Mistress of Bhatia House
By Sujata Massey
In 1920s India, women obey their husband's demands in all things, especially areas of reproductive rights and body autonomy. With no available birth control and no access to doctors, Bombay's child mortality and maternal deaths are high. Perveen Mistry, Bombay's only female lawyer, is thrust into these tragic circumstances when she volunteers to defend a wealthy Bombay family's young servant, who's accused of aborting her fetus. Massey's evocative mysteries featuring Mistry have always woven political, cultural and critical social issues into a compelling historical mystery. This one's threads could be worn today. (Soho Crime, 432 pages. Out July 11.)
Reviewed by Carole E. Barrowman, special to the Star Tribune
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Harlem After Midnight
By Louise Hare
For London-based jazz singer Lena Aldridge, autumn in New York (as a 1934 song describes) seems "so inviting" with its "thrill of first-nighting" and "promise of new love." After a harrowing Atlantic crossing, Lena stays in Harlem to get to know her beau Will, earn a chance to sing at the Apollo and learn more about her late father Alfie's side of the family. Lena discovers Will and Alfie have serious family secrets. Hare's accomplished mystery shifts between Lena's Harlem in 1936 and her father's in 1908, when autumn in New York was "often mingled with pain." (Berkley, 352 pages. Out Aug. 29.)
Reviewed by Carole E. Barrowman, special to the Star Tribune
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Those We Thought We Knew
By David Joy
This searing stunner of a book is a lamentation on place, how for "certain groups in America, trauma was ... inheritance." It's like a Nina Simone song that contains "an infinite sort of sadness," yet closes with a promise of hope. Toya Gardner, a Black artist, has returned to her grandmother's house in the North Carolina mountains, a county "you didn't land on by accident." Toya's art reckons with a past that too many idealize. Ernie Allison, a white deputy, finds a Klan contact list of government officials in a drunk's car. The intersection of their stories drives the novel. (Putnam, 400 pages. Out Aug. 1.)
Reviewed by Carole E. Barrowman, special to the Star Tribune
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How Can I Help You
By Laura Sims
They are librarians in a "quaint town on the Platte River" and dangerous women. Margo's a fugitive murderer; Patricia's a struggling novelist. Margo's a "killer nurse" hiding behind books she doesn't read until she discovers Shirley Jackson's "We Have Always Lived in the Castle." Patricia's "done making things up" until her pen decides Margo's life is good plot fodder. Sims' audacious story shifts between Margo and Patricia's points of view in a battle of wits that's mesmerizing. This exceptional novel is firmly in Highsmith territory (yep, another Patricia) and the ending is everything. (Putnam, 256 pages. Out July 18.)
Reviewed by Carole E. Barrowman, special to the Star Tribune
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What Never Happened
By Rachel Howzell Hall
As a child, journalist Coco Weber's family moved from "the heart of Black Los Angeles" to Catalina Island where, years later, her family was slaughtered in a home invasion. Since then, Coco has filled her life with "words, men, and guilt," which "demands ransom even when you're broke." Coco returns to the island to take care of an elderly aunt, escape an ex-boyfriend and "let it all work itself out." Not going to be that easy, especially when elderly islanders are dying in unusual numbers. Howzell Hall's prose is stiletto sharp and the plot's a killer. (Thomas & Mercer, 428 pages. Out Aug. 1.)
Reviewed by Carole E. Barrowman, special to the Star Tribune
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