A Violent Masterpiece
by Jordan Harper
A VIOLENT MASTERPIECE (Mulholland, 372 pp., $29) arrives on the heels of the drip-drip-drip of the Epstein files, with its juxtaposition of elite impunity and the exploitation of girls and women. Misogyny, abuse and skulduggery — perennial subjects in crime novels — are made fresh in this fiendish, gorgeously written descent into hell.
Three characters drive Harper’s blistering narrative: Jake Deal, once a noted journalist, now a livestreaming night crawler “driving L.A. at high speed, looking for footage, looking for blood on the streets, broken glass, car fires and corpses”; Kara Delgado, a private concierge for the very rich, searching for her missing best friend; and Doug Gibson, a crusading lawyer drafted to defend a pedophile producer who’s ready to take a lot of other people down with him. A shadowy fourth character, the L.A. Ripper — terrorizing women and the city — unites them in their pursuit of self-redemption (or preservation).
“A Violent Masterpiece” reads like pure rage cooled into crystalline prose, each sentence a thrilling indictment of the corruption we live in. This is the noir novel for our times.
The Counting Game
by Sinéad Nolan
THE COUNTING GAME (Scout Press, 400 pp., $30) is understandably going to be compared to Tana French’s “In the Woods,” since it involves children going into a heavily wooded area with only one coming back. But Nolan is after something different than French; she’s more interested in the ways traumatic losses ripple through families.
The Knight children were playing hide-and-seek when 13-year-old Saoirse vanished in a rural Irish forest. Her brother, 9-year-old Jack, knows what happened, but seems unable to divulge it. A psychotherapist from Dublin, Freya Hemmings, herself haunted by the death of a daughter, is hired by the police to treat Jack and gain his trust. As she slowly unwinds his secrets, and the town’s, Freya recognizes the danger she’s in, and how it connects to the disappearances of other girls.
Nolan cranks up the suspense to the maximum, mixing mounting dread and wells of compassion before arriving at a truly surprising finale.
It’s taken a moment for the fusion of romantic comedy and mystery to become a genre staple — and I’m still waiting for a truly great one — but I’m glad to have read two supremely entertaining entries this month.
A Cute Little Murder
by Molly Harper
A CUTE LITTLE MURDER (Berkley Mystery, 368 pp., paperback, $19) introduces Lainey Piper, a freelance forensic accountant who was once the sidekick to her teenage pal Harlow Drake, always on the sidelines as they solved small-town crimes together (think lunch ladies skimming cafeteria money). Now Harlow’s a big-time true crime personality with a popular TV show, her reputation reeling from a botched case, and Lainey’s up to her eyeballs in student loans.
Which is why their reunion is more about money than nostalgia. Or is it? As Lainey, Harlow and the crew descend upon an island hotel decades past its luxe glory days, on the trail of a vanished starlet, Lainey’s investigative smarts take center stage. Bodies accumulate and tensions flare while sparks fly between Lainey and Milo, the compliance officer overseeing the investigation. Harper concocts a delightful mystery with some real steel to it.
A Murder Most Camp
by Nicolas DiDomizio
Michael Hartford IV — Mikey to everyone except his father — is the most nepo of nepo babies, spending money faster than his monthly allowance can deliver it, emotionally anesthetized and drifting at 29. No wonder pere Hartford, in the opening pages of DiDomizio’s A MURDER MOST CAMP (Poisoned Pen Press, 324 pp., paperback, $17.99), issues Mikey an ultimatum: “You must spend the remaining months until your 30th birthday in service of something greater than yourself. No parties, no yacht, no leisure of any kind.” And if he doesn’t? “I cannot in good conscience grant you full access to your inheritance.”
There’s more: Mikey must spend three months working at Camp Lore, a rustic upstate New York summer camp, as a “special activities coordinator.” His bookish, crime-obsessed 12-year-old aunt Annabelle, whose favorite thriller is “The Silence of the Lambs,” isn’t thrilled to be sent there, either, but her mother — married to Hartford Junior, Mikey’s grandfather — insists. “This place is giving ‘Blair Witch,’” Mikey says when they arrive, eyeing the camp’s lodge, a “saggy-roofed log structure that appears to have been built sometime during the Dust Bowl era.” Then a tantalizing 13-year-old murder mystery lands in their laps.
DiDomizio’s voicey, lively writing shines as Mikey sheds archness for intimacy (the extremely hot lifeguard who catalyzes a spicy enemies-to-lovers arc doesn’t hurt). The mystery is slightly telegraphed, but nowhere near enough to lessen your reading pleasure.
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