A Bad, Bad Place
by Frances Crawford
Some novels feel as if their existence required the author to have lived several entire lives before writing them, and A BAD, BAD PLACE (Soho Crime, 345 pp., $28.95), by a Glaswegian named Frances Crawford, is one of those.
The narrative perspectives of Janey Devine, age 12, and her nana catapult the reader back to 1979, to a working-class neighborhood in Glasgow. Janey has discovered the corpse of a 22-year-old woman, Samantha Watson — it’s all the fault of her dog, Sid Vicious — and if she witnessed anything, she doesn’t remember it. The police think she’s hiding something, and so does Samantha’s father, a dangerous gangster.
As time passes, Janey begins to recall what she saw, placing her in real danger. “Your wee mind just couldn’t cope and hid it away, and no wonder, my lamb, no wonder,” her grandmother tells her.
Crawford has delivered a slow-burn mystery that doubles as a moving coming-of-age tale, investing readers in Janey’s fate but also showing how a community can protect the wrong people for too long — and at too great a cost.
My Grandfather, the Master Detective
by Masateru Konishi
MY GRANDFATHER, THE MASTER DETECTIVE (Putnam, 328 pp., $29) is Konishi’s English-language debut. Translated by Louise Heal Kawai, it is a curious specimen, a cross between a cozy mystery and what’s called “healing fiction” in Japan and Korea: sweet, whimsical novels, often dashed with magical realism, that are meant to bring comfort.
For Kaede, a 27-year-old teacher, taking care of her grandfather, who has a form of dementia, is more joy than burden. Her grandfather’s memory may be worsening, and he is beginning to hallucinate, but he is still able to deduce and reason his way through thorny mysteries, honed by his years as a member of the Waseda Mystery Club.
Kaede, who wonders if “his hallucinations were a manifestation of the logical conclusions that his mind had come to,” begins bringing him everyday mysteries that the two solve together. Yet even as they work through the puzzles, Kaede begins to sense a shadow stalking her, one that speaks to her past and the lingering absence of her long-dead mother. She comes home to her apartment one night to find a bouquet of black roses tied to the door.
Though the text is peppered with plenty of references to classic Golden Age mysteries, this is less a whodunit than a tender exploration of family dynamics.
Still Life
by Malin Persson Giolito
STILL LIFE (Other Press, 272 pp., paperback, $18.99), Giolito’s linked story collection, caught my attention because it does something I’ve never seen before. Each tale is about ordinary people whose lives are upended by crime, and each embodies a different part of the Swedish criminal code.
All 10 of the stories — translated by Rachel Willson Broyles — are gems. One is the harrowing account of a mother’s helplessness in the face of her child’s slide into self-harm and criminality; another is a revenge narrative about a betrayed relationship; and a third describes a man’s kindness to a refugee in need, despite what the law says.
The stories, which underscore the ways crime can arrive at anyone’s door, rarely wrap up with neat justice. In fiction, Giolito writes in the acknowledgments, we prefer that “the guilty party be punished and the victim get revenge. In reality, a crime is rarely so tidily resolved. We all do things we regret, things we’re ashamed of, things that are hard to forgive, because that’s what it is to be human.”
The Tree of Light and Flowers
by Thomas Perry
The death last fall of Thomas Perry was a massive loss; he wrote some of the great thriller writers of our age. (My favorites include “The Butcher’s Boy,” “Metzger’s Dog,” and “Pursuit.”) He also created an indelible series character, Jane Whitefield, who specializes in helping desperate people disappear by creating new identities for them. Jane makes a final, memorable appearance in THE TREE OF LIGHT AND FLOWERS (Mysterious Press, 280 pp., $27.95).
Happily married to a surgeon named Carey McKinnon, and pregnant, Jane has laid aside her old life. But then a teenage girl shows up, in dire need of her skills — and so does a team of assassins. Jane had “always imagined that if a day like today ever came, she and Carey would walk out the door with the go bags she had made containing money and a few carefully built identities, and drive off,” Perry writes. “What she had not anticipated was that when this day came, there would no longer be just two of them.”
Perry, always a master at ratcheting up tension and delivering high-octane action scenes, showcases all his talents here. Intentionally or not, the novel has a whiff of melancholy. This final Jane Whitefield novel is the farewell his readers needed.
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