Before You Were Anne, by Emiko Jean (Simon & Schuster, 310 pages)
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Emiko Jean hit a triple with her debut novel, The Return Of Ellie Black, about an abducted and abused child. Now she returns with a home run in Before You Were Anne, a tale that taps into a world of deceit and profit.
There are three women in this enthralling story and all, in totally different ways, are connected. Chelsey Calhoun is a policewoman, and soon to be a mother. Before she heads off for maternity leave, there’s one last case. A woman named Anne Walker is dead, murdered, and her 16-year-old daughter, Naomi, is missing. But this is no ordinary killing, because Anne Walker is really a Japanese national named Rika Takahashi. How she got to Seattle from a remote Japanese farm and how she’s survived is the backstory. Who killed her is even more mysterious.
Jean is a clever plotter and excellent at building character. As the case unfolds, Chelsey’s own past comes hauntingly into the present as she unravels the series of terrible decisions that eventually killed Anne.
Brimstone Hollow, by Archer Sullivan (Minotaur, 304 pages)
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Archer Sullivan’s debut, The Witch’s Orchard, introduced private investigator Annie Gore of Louisville, Ky., just a few counties from her Appalachian homeland. A woman named Katie May wants information about her deceased father. The two were long estranged but Katie thinks there’s some question about his death. It was sudden, he was buried quickly, with no autopsy, and he died of snakebite.
Since he was a pastor who ran a snake-handling ministry, Katie has questions. He’d handled venomous snakes all his life, been bitten before, healed, gone on. What happened?
The case will take Annie back to the towns she left years before and to a mysterious place called Brimstone Hollow, where sulphurous fumes ooze from the earth to poison the air. It’s soon clear that’s there’s more than sulphur and snakes poisoning the quiet countryside as she investigates the strange death of Katie’s father. A terrific follow-up to The Witch’s Orchard.
Hail Mary, by Elizabeth Urso (Simon & Schuster, 336 pages)
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Just in time for Halloween, we get Hail Mary from Elizabeth Urso, a genuinely creepy novel with an even creepier setting. There’s an old mansion that houses an undertaking parlour in a small town on the north shore of Lake Huron. It was a lucrative business and Mary Foreman’s family benefited until scandal struck. Her mother was accused of a crime and tried, and Mary fled to Toronto and better climes.
But when her mother reappears in her life during a local election where her uncle is a candidate, Mary finds herself recalled to North Shore Township to teach at St. Joseph’s School for Girls. She can take up residence in the old Foreman House, now vacant. There’s also a time capsule at the school left by Mary’s grandmother. When it’s opened, the nasty family story is retold and Mary finds herself facing local suspicion.
It seems folks think this apple is from a cursed tree. Mary resolves to discover exactly what the truth is about her family and that leads to a dangerous road into a past that more than one person wants kept deeply buried. This is a great atmospheric chiller that will keep you reading into the night.
Agrippa, by Robert Harris (Random House Canada, 384 pages)
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Like other reviewers, I’ve run out of superlatives for Robert Harris. His twists, his incredible skill at character-building, his depth of research all lead to novels that are timely, fascinating and so readable that I save them for the weekend when I can flip straight through without a break. Agrippa, his return to ancient Rome, is all of that and then some.
Those unfamiliar with Robert Graves’s I, Claudius (or the marvellous BBC series) may not recognize Agrippa. He was the trusted general whose military successes helped Octavian, Julius Caesar’s nephew and heir, become Augustus, who presided over the end of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire. History usually gives Agrippa short shrift.
He comes across as stolid and a bit dull. Leave it to Harris to flesh that flat image out. Agrippa was not an aristocrat – a failing in class-conscious Rome – and his rise is because of his boyhood alliance with Octavian. This being Rome, intrigue, assassination, war and domination follow.
Through it all, Agrippa manages to win battles, marry well, keep his head when many are losing theirs and eventually die in bed. This triumphant retelling is worthy of a man who made a thriller out of a papal conclave. I can’t wait for the film.
The Rayburn Affair, by Laurie Petrou (House of Anansi, 256 pages)
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Autumn is the perfect time for this psychological thriller set on a college campus, and Laurie Petrou, author of young-adult fiction and a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, delivers in her first crime novel.
We have striving academics, famous authors, and twists and turns as friendships turn dangerous. The striver is Dr. Ruth Morgan, who spends her days lecturing on “AI: The new frontier of storytelling.” At night, Ruth writes her own fiction in the old-fashioned way: putting words on a page.
When Shelby Rayburn, a famous author, and her husband, Oscar, come to Ruth’s university, Ruth can hardly believe her luck. Soon it all leads to promises of publication and academic and social success. But things are never as they seem and soon, signs point to troubles that Ruth can’t imagine in her star-struck dreams.
Petrou knows the undertow in those nice academic circles and uses it accordingly. There are twists and plot lines to follow and a nice, slick ending. Read it all, don’t skip to the end.
Who By His Own Hand, by Greg Rhyno (Cormorant, 253 pages)
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This is my first Dame Polara mystery by Guelph, Ont., author Greg Rhyno and I am already on the trail of the others. The setting is Toronto and Rhyno really knows his old hometown. From the old motel strip on the Queensway to the towers of North York, we get a tour of the nice and nasty, and it’s all great fun.
The story features detective Dame Polara, a single mother. Her toddler, Rosie, is kidnapped, which in crime fiction land is a good excuse for a lot of racing around and derring-do, and Rhyno delivers all that, with panache.
Dame knows who has stolen her child and why, but soon, that turns into part of a much larger political conspiracy. Relying on her ailing father’s criminal ties, Dame has to race to find Rosie and survive knowing way too much about bad people. Rhyno is a writer to watch.