Shari Lapena is a good writer. I recommend this murder mystery.

Nothing ever happens in sleepy little Fairhill, Vermont.

The teenagers get their kicks telling ghost stories in the old graveyard. The parents trust their kids will arrive home safe from school. Everyone knows everyone. Curtains rarely twitch. Front doors are left unlocked.

But this morning, all of that will change.

Because Diana Brewer isn’t lying safely in her bed where she belongs. Instead she lies in a hayfield, circled by vultures, discovered by a local farmer. 

How quickly a girl becomes a ghost. How quickly a town of friendly, familiar faces becomes a town of suspects, a place of fear and paranoia.

Someone in Fairhill did this. Everyone wants answers.

ShariLapena.com

The 11th book (2018) in the Virgil Flowers series ➙ Holy Ghost.

Virgil Flowers investigates a miracle — and a murder —

Pinion, Minnesota: a metropolis of all of seven hundred souls, for which the word “moribund” might have been invented. Nothing ever happened there and nothing ever would — until the mayor of sorts (campaign slogan: “I’ll Do What I Can”) and a buddy come up with a scheme to put Pinion on the map.

They’d heard of a place where a floating image of the Virgin Mary had turned the whole town into a shrine, attracting thousands of pilgrims. And all those pilgrims needed food, shelter, all kinds of crazy things, right? They’d all get rich! What could go wrong?

When the dead body shows up, they find out, and that’s only the beginning of their troubles — and Virgil Flowers’ — as they are all about to discover all too soon.

Wayfaring Stranger (2014) is the first Burke book I’ve read.

He seems a very good writer — though I only got through 50% of this one.

It got too bleak. Good people somehow ruining their lives.

It reminded me of Cormac McCarthy. Burke’s also been compared to Thomas Hardy.

I’d given up on Karen Slaughter, finding her early books simple too violent against women.

They are horror.

For some reason I downloaded this short book — and found it excellent.

Protecting someone always comes at a cost.

At the age of thirteen, Charlie Quinn’s childhood came to an abrupt and devastating end. Two men, with a grudge against her lawyer father, broke into her home—and after that shocking night, Charlie’s world was never the same.

Now a lawyer herself, Charlie has made it her mission to defend those with no one else to turn to. So when Flora Faulkner, a motherless teen, begs for help, Charlie is reminded of her own past, and is powerless to say no.

But honor-student Flora is in far deeper trouble than Charlie could ever have anticipated. Soon she must ask herself: How far should she go to protect her client? And can she truly believe everything she is being told?

Excellent historical fiction. I was astonished by how many facts were included in this entertaining romp.

The Phoenix Crown (2024)

From bestselling authors Janie Chang and Kate Quinn, a thrilling and unforgettable narrative about the intertwined lives of two wronged women, spanning from the chaos of the San Francisco earthquake to the glittering palaces of Versailles.

San Francisco, 1906. In a city bustling with newly minted millionaires and scheming upstarts, two very different women hope to change their fortunes: Gemma, a golden-haired, silver-voiced soprano whose career desperately needs rekindling, and Suling, a petite and resolute Chinatown embroideress who is determined to escape an arranged marriage.

Their paths cross when they are drawn into the orbit of Henry Thornton, a charming railroad magnate whose extraordinary collection of Chinese antiques includes the fabled Phoenix Crown, a legendary relic of Beijing’s fallen Summer Palace.

His patronage offers Gemma and Suling the chance of a lifetime, but their lives are thrown into turmoil when a devastating earthquake rips San Francisco apart and Thornton disappears, leaving behind a mystery reaching further than anyone could have imagined . . . until the Phoenix Crown reappears five years later at a sumptuous Paris costume ball, drawing Gemma and Suling together in one last desperate quest for justice.

Of the other characters, I enjoyed Alice Eastwood most. Based on a real person of the era.

Harlan Coben is the master of engaging plots.

This is not one of his best.

… Still, it kept me going.

7th in the Myron Bolitar series. He reps sports stars and celebrities — but somehow ends up spending more time solving murder mysteries.

His best friend, Windsor Horne Lockwood III (better known as Win), and his assistant at MB SportReps, Esperanza Diaz are both more fascinating characters.

Life isn’t going well for Myron Bolitar. His business is struggling, and his father, recently recovered from a heart attack, is facing his own mortality – and forcing Myron to face it too.

Then Emily Downing, Myron’s college sweetheart, reappears in his life with devastating news: her thirteen-year-old son Jeremy is gravely ill and can be saved only by a bone-marrow transplant – from a donor who has vanished without trace.

Before Myron can absorb this revelation, Emily hits him with an even bigger shocker: Jeremy is Myron’s son, conceived the night before Emily’s wedding to another man.

Staggered by the news, Myron plunges into a search for the missing donor.

But for Myron, finding the only person who can save the boy’s life means cracking open a mystery that involves a broken family, a brutal kidnapping spree, and a cat-and-mouse game between an ambitious reporter and the FBI.

A good read.

The bad guys are really, really bad.

#16 (2018) in the anti-hero Charlie Parker series.

Recent rainfall has exposed a hidden grave in the woods close to Portland, Maine.

Parker is retained by a local lawyer to identify the woman’s body, and establish what happened to a baby that forensics believe may have been born just before she was killed.

Parker’s best guess is that the child may have been adopted locally by whoever buried the woman …

Themes like gender violence and systemic cruelty are woven into the plot.  The plight of women escaping abusive relationships plays a crucial role. 

The highlight for me are Charlie’s entertaining cast of friends: Louis and Angel, a Gay couple who are loyal friends and killers for hire. And his frequent boss, lawyer Moxie Castin, who turns out to be Jewish … ish.

There is a parallel story line of a racist criminal and his very stupid son.

There is a supernatural element in this one, but it doesn’t distract.

Cliff hanger ending. I’ll buy the sequel on Audible.

Crime Fiction Lover review

The 10th book (2017) in the Virgil Flowers series ➙ Deep Freeze.  

Originally disappointed in these Virgil Flowers books, I’ve come to like them. Or … perhaps they got better over the years.

Class reunions: a time for memories — good, bad, and, as Virgil Flowers is about to find out, deadly — in the thrilling new novel in the #1 New York Times-bestselling series

Virgil knows the town of Trippton, Minnesota, a little too well. A few years back, he investigated the corrupt — and as it turned out, homicidal — local school board, and now the town’s back in view with more alarming news: A woman’s been found dead, frozen in a block of ice.

There’s a possibility that it might be connected to a high school class of twenty years ago that has a mid-winter reunion coming up, and so, wrapping his coat a little tighter, Virgil begins to dig into twenty years’ worth of traumas, feuds, and bad blood. In the process, one thing becomes increasingly clear to him. It’s true what they say: High school is murder.