Reviews
The Vanishing Year – The BOLO Books Review
Domestic suspense continues to be an increasingly popular sub-genre of crime fiction, rife with variations on the theme of danger lurking in the most unexpected, yet commonplace, locations. The Vanishing Year by Kate Moretti is one of the most recent examples and one...
Blood on the Bayou – The BOLO Books Review
From the Booking Desk: Blood on the Bayou is the latest Bouchercon Anthology - release recently at the 2016 Bouchercon in New Orleans. This collection of stories is 100% solid and is as diverse as the city of New Orleans itself. I could have reviewed any of these...
The Branson Beauty –
The BOLO Books Review
It is sometimes incorrectly assumed that the traditional mystery is the sole domain of the Golden Age. While it is true that many of the touchstones of the genre came from that period, there are plenty of modern mysteries that fit this mold – and in some cases expand...
Only Daughter – The BOLO Books Review
Anna Snoekstra is a debut author from Melbourne, Australia. Only Daughter is her first foray into crime fiction and was recently released. Readers who enjoy dueling timelines and complex female narrators will enjoy this succinct debut. This tightly written novel (it...
The Prison Guard’s Son – The BOLO Books Review
Over the years, many crime fiction works have been inspired by the case of James Patrick Bulger – the British two-year-old who was brutally tortured and killed by two ten-year-old boys in the early 1990’s. Authors such as Laura Lippman (with Every Secret Thing), Alex...
A Great Reckoning – The BOLO Books Review
Over the course of eleven novels, Louise Penny has amassed a legion of fans who anxiously await the release of a new Inspector Gamache novel each year. This year’s entry, A Great Reckoning, is one of the best in a series that has already reached great heights in terms...
Huntress Moon – The BOLO Books Review
(This is the third and final in a series looking at the work of Bouchercon 2016 Guests of Honor.) With Huntress Moon, Alexandra Sokoloff has used her background in screenwriting and her interest in feminism to aid in writing a thriller that manages to be both...
Closed Casket – The BOLO Books Review
Sophie Hannah is known in the crime fiction community for writing some of the most complex and psychologically sound mysteries available, so it was not a surprise when the Agatha Christie estate announced that they had chosen her to write a new Hercule Poirot novel....
Red Right Hand – The BOLO Books Review
Chris Holm was faced with a task both enviable and daunting in equal measures. Writing a follow-up to a critically-acclaimed series debut such as The Killing Kind was never going to be easy. Think of it as similar to the pressure on the creators of one of those...
Darktown – The BOLO Books Review
Thomas Mullen’s Darktown is an important book. Inspired by – and dedicated to – the legacy left by the first eight African-American officers hired by the Atlanta police department, the novel does much to explain the problems of institutionalized racism inherent in law...
The Fixes – The BOLO Books Review
When Owen Laukkanen ventured into the young adult writing world under the pen name of Owen Matthews, he created a new, unique style that is all his own. Just as with the Anthony-Award nominated How to Win at High School, Owen’s new YA novel, The Fixes, employs the...
Black Wood – The BOLO Books Review
Navigating the balance between familiar and fresh can be tricky business, but with her debut crime fiction title, Black Wood, SJI Holliday makes it look easy. Black Wood is one of those novels that employs the use of unreliable memory as a device to heighten the...
Under the Harrow – The BOLO Books Review
Flynn Berry’s Under the Harrow is a crime fiction debut that packs quite a punch. This slim volume is so densely packed with descriptive language and beautiful imagery that readers will struggle with wanting to read faster to know what happens and slowing down to...
The Silence of the Sea – The BOLO Books Review
Since her debut novel, Last Rituals, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir has been one of the most popular Icelandic authors of crime fiction. In 2015, The Silence of the Sea was awarded the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year. The Silence of the Sea is the...
The American Girl – The BOLO Books Review
After writing a Frankenstein-inspired novel, some short fiction, and many poems, Kate Horsley is now making her crime fiction debut with The American Girl. It is the story of an outsider thrust into a tangled web without the benefit of memory and a story of the woman...
Blue Moon –
The BOLO Books Review
With Blue Moon, Wendy Corsi Staub returns readers to Mundy’s Landing for Book Two of her addictive trilogy. Fans who have already read Blood Red know what to expect, but the good news is that Blue Moon reads just as well as a stand-alone as it does as part of this...
You Will Know Me – The BOLO Books Review
For several books now, Megan Abbott has focused her attention on the inner workings of the minds of teenage girls and the influence society imparts on them. That is certainly still a part of her latest book, You Will Know Me, but in this new novel she takes it one...
Among the Wicked – The BOLO Books Review
Readers can always count on one of Linda Castillo’s Amish-based mystery novels to transport them. Among the Wicked is the eighth full-length novel featuring Kate Burkholder and once again Castillo entertains and educates. Among the Wicked finds Kate having to make a...
Revolver – The BOLO Books Review
One city – Philadelphia; One family – the Walczaks; One history – Ours. In the simplest of terms, this is a description of Duane Swierczynski’s Revolver. By documenting three generations of one family, Swierczynski manages to speak universally about the struggle to be...
All is Not Forgotten –
The BOLO Books Review
Wendy Walker confidently strolls into the crime fiction arena with All is Not Forgotten, a novel that features authentic characters, clever misdirection, timely discussions, and just enough rebellion with which to seduce the reader. All is Not Forgotten is set in a...