We did it! We made it to the long weekend! And not just any long weekend, but Memorial Day weekend, AKA the unofficial start of SUMMERTIME! Now, you can spend this on the beach or at the park… but you can also spend it in front of your TV, relaxing your heart out. Here at CrimeReads, we want to help, so we rounded up some of the new late spring crime series you should add to your watchlist. Poker Face, Season Two If you’re a regular reader of this website, you probably knew this, but our Lord and Savior Charlie Cale is back. In Season One she was on the run from Ron Pearlman; this season she’s on the run from Rhea Perlman. The premise is the same—the nomadic, on-the-lam, wisecracking, chainsmoking Charlie arrives in a new town and discovers someone telling a lie. She’s got this thing where she can tell right away if someone is lying, and she’s also got this thing where once she realizes someone’s trying to hide something, she tries to uncover what it could be. Where to Stream: Peacock Secrets We Keep, Season One This Danish import is an interesting, class-focused thriller, taking place in a wealthy neighborhood in suburban Denmark, where affluent families typically employ Filipino immigrants as childcare workers. Our protagonist is Cecilie, who notices that her neighbor’s au pair has gone missing, and sets out to investigate. Where to Stream: Netflix Mobland, Season 1 “From the Underworld of Guy Ritchie,” proclaims the text in the trailer of the new series Mobland, though it’s not clear if this is better or for worse. Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren, and Tom Hardy star in this series about a crime family in the UK embroiled in a conflict with another crime family in the UK. Paddy Considine, Lara Pulver, and Joanne Froggat also co-star. Where to Stream: Paramount Plus Nine Perfect Strangers, Season 2 Nicole Kidman is back as retreat leader Masha Dmitrichenko in Season Two of NPS! It’s been a few years (cough… four… cough) but we’re ready for the twists and turns of this new chapter. The stars of Season 2 include: Henry Golding, Mark Strong, Lena Olin, Annie Murphy, King Princess, Murray Bartlett, and Dolly de Leon. Where to Stream: Hulu The Better Sister, Season 1 Alafair Burke’s instant-classic novel has been adapted for a series starring Elizabeth Banks, Jessica Biel, and Corey Stoll! Biel plays Chloe, a wife and mother. Her sister Nicky is battling addiction. And bother sisters’ lives change when Chloe’s husband Adam is murdered. Where to Stream: Amazon Prime Murderbot, Season 1 Alexander Skarsgård plays private security cyborg who has styled himself “Murderbot” and who must hide his newfound sentience, in this action sci-fi thriller comedy based on The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. Where to Stream: Apple TV+ The Stolen Girl, Season 1 Based on the bestselling novel by Alice Dahl, The Stolen Girl is about a mother who goes to pick up her daughter at a sleepover, but realizes she’s not there. Terrifying and riveting. Where to Stream: Disney+ View the full article

All my life, I’ve loved folklore and mythology, and the way they fire the imagination. They aren’t history, but they suggest history and inspire us to think about the world as it existed before the one we know today. In a way, I feel the same way about my love of early cinema—it’s not the way the world really was, but a window through which to view the storytellers of a world long past. I’ve always had a particular fascination with horror tropes and legendary monsters, as part of this larger interest in the stories of the past. My first novel, Of Saints and Shadows, was largely inspired by my thoughts about vampire folklore, about the “rules” of vampire stories. In that novel, I tried to create my own mythology to make sense of it all, but in other works I’ve focused on the idea that every one of these monstrous legends must have a root. There were vampiric legends all over the world at a time when stories didn’t travel much, which brought me to the conclusion that there had to be some other reason for the similarities in the folklore of these far-flung places. In the many years since then, I’ve dug into—and invented—both history and pre-history many times. I love imagining a world before the world, before humanity. Gods before gods. Monsters who lived so long ago that historians can’t say for sure whether or not they existed. The Earth is very old, and we continue to be surprised by discoveries of evidence of human societies in places and times we once thought impossible. This isn’t to say that I believe monsters roamed the Earth in pre-history, but it’s so much fun to imagine, and every time there’s a new discovery about pre-history, story sparks fly. When I wrote my Bram Stoker Award-winning novel Ararat, I certainly didn’t believe that Noah’s Ark existed, but I knew that stories of an incredible flood were common across a variety of ancient world cultures, which suggests that such a flood really happened. To the people in those times, it must have seemed as if the whole world flooded, because they didn’t realize how much more “world” was out there. The real stumbling block was figuring out how anyone could have built an “ark” in a time when boats had barely been imagined, and methods had not been created to craft a boat of that size that could have stayed afloat. In my novel Road of Bones…hmm, how do I explain this without spoiling it for you? Suffice to say that as the story unfolds, we learn about the world before the world. There are layers of supernatural in that book—one that represents human society, one of early human history, and a layer that I suppose we could call the world before the world before the world. A time when the spirits of nature roamed, unfiltered, unchained by human concepts of good and evil. The arrival of the first people gave them something to pique their interest, and the adoration or fear they inspired in those first people turned them into something else. Gods and monsters and devils. When Mike Mignola and I wrote our novel Baltimore, or the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire, we found a shared love of such stories, of folklore, and imagining a world that was ancient when the ancients were young. As Baltimore’s story segued into comic books, building through that and other titles in its own comic book universe—the Outerverse—we crafted a massive, sprawling pre-history, including a creature called the Red King, who in the Outerverse was the father of all monsters. In the pages of Baltimore and then Lady Baltimore, we continued to explore, and when we introduced a variety of witches into the series, my instinct demanded that I explain that variety. Who were these witches? The Ur-Witch was born. Though the world of The Night Birds is very much not the same world as the Outerverse, I’ve borrowed the concept of Ur-Witches from myself, and it has evolved significantly. There are so many different ideas and images of witches and witchcraft, around the world and across the centuries. Some of those images are empowering and others were created as tools of oppression. Some conjured beauty and others ugliness. But, as with vampires, the legends and stories of people (especially women) and creatures who were portrayed as witches, or as performing something like witchcraft, span the world. So when I sat down to write The Night Birds, I wasn’t just thinking about a coven of witches, I was thinking about the roots of that coven. The history and folklore. These weren’t going to be modern wiccans, or stereotypes from the Middle Ages. These are contemporary women who discovered the ancestral roots of witchcraft, going back to the earliest humans. In this story, I delve into the prehistoric existence of a race of creatures capable of monstrous magic, the Ur-Witches—the beings that inspired thousands of years of legends around the world, and a profound dread in small men who were afraid of powerful women. These Ur-Witches were worshipped by women who learned their craft and were gifted with a bit of their magic. The remaining legends come down to us from Iceland, where these women were called NäturvefjarI. In English they’re “the night weavers,” and they are the reason for our ancestral fear of witches and conjurors, and the terrifying imagery that lingers in our reptilian brains and imprints itself on human perceptions over the centuries. The thing that makes me happiest about this bit of folklore is when readers come up to me and ask about my research into Icelandic folklore, and I get to tell them it’s all invented. There are no legends of the Ur-Witches or the Näturvefjar outside of this novel, but it thrills me to think that readers might go on believing this folklore is real, because then…doesn’t it become real? Doesn’t it become part of the existing folklore? Centuries from now, if some student or historian believes that ancient people worshipped Ur-Witches and thought of themselves as Näturvefjar, nothing would make me happier. It all starts in The Night Birds. *** View the full article

My father, who is 78 and lives in Malaysia, has lunch once a week with a group of his high school classmates. I’m in awe, and not a little envious, that he has a group of friends who are so committed to each other that they convene weekly, six decades after they first met. My father’s group reminds me of the legendary collection of British novelists and critics – Martin Amis, Christopher Hitchens, Julian Barnes, Salman Rushdie et al – who had a standing Soho lunch for many years. There were of course some points of difference between these two groups, not least that my father is teetotal and the writers by most accounts drank as much as they ate… What it must have been to sit at that table – and to stagger out afterwards. The most productive literary lunch of all time was actually a dinner, and it took place in the Langham Hotel in London in 1889, when the publisher J.M. Stoddart invited two young writers he was courting to create something original for his magazine, Lippincott’s Monthly. The writers invited were Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle and, by the end of what one can only imagine was a pretty fabulous meal, Wilde had promised to write The Picture of Dorian Gray and Conan Doyle had committed to penning The Sign of the Four, featuring one Sherlock Holmes, for the magazine. One hopes nobody queried Stoddart’s expense claim. Often I find myself dreaming of being invited to one of these lunches, or of perhaps being present in that motel room in Miami one warm night in February 1964 when Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown and Sam Cooke drank and talked through to the morning after Ali’s victory over Sonny Liston. I find it unbearably romantic, this idea of a group of great historical figures who are also friends, who lunch and achieve greatness together and who remain each other’s best critics and wisest counsellors throughout their lives. I suspect that I’m obsessed with stories of this type because with my career zig zagging between books, theatre, tv, and film, I’ve never settled down in one discipline long enough to acquire a tightly knit peer group of my own. Whilst I’m lucky to count many writers of distinction amongst my friendship group, and even luckier to have collaborated with many of them, few of my closest creative relationships could strictly be called peers. From Douglas Adams (who I first met when I was 18) and David Baddiel to Lenny Henry and Sanjeev Bhaskar, I seem to always surround myself with mentor-collaborators, a decade or two my senior, and rather more famous than me. Those last three constitute a coterie of multi-ethnic trailblazing National Treasures, who I admired as a teenager, and have inexplicably ended up collaborating with as an adult. On the upside, I have learnt so much from these greats that whatever I might lose in peer-feeling, I gain in expertise. Also, they usually pay for lunch. Lately, I seem to be taking this tendency of mine to extremes, seeking mentorship not only from the talented living, but also from the great dead. Over the last year I’ve been immersed in adapting two of the finest prose stylists of the 20th century: P.G.Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler. Wodehouse, comic chronicler of the British aristocracy and creator of Jeeves & Bertie Wooster, Lord Emsworth and the inimitable Psmith, is the undisputed king of the English country-house farce; Chandler, creator of the iconic P.I. Philip Marlowe, is rightly acknowledged as the writer who elevated the detective story to the realms of literature. Asked by their respective estates to adapt their work for stage and screen, I find myself in the terrifying position of having to write dialogue that can sit comfortably aside their original perfect sentences. Consider the following: ‘It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.’ ‘She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say ‘when’.’ ‘He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom.‘ ‘He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.‘ ‘From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away.’ ‘She had a penetrating sort of laugh. Rather like a train going into a tunnel.’ Hang on. What’s going on here, you might ask? Half of those lines are Wodehouse and half are Chandler. Yet, if you can correctly match the right sentence with the right author on all the above , without resorting to the internet, a) you’re lying and b) I’d like to hire you as a script editor. It started to become clear to me that these two apparently very different writers have, on the level of the sentence at least, quite a lot in common. Both are masters of the unexpected simile and the heroic metaphor, and both wield transferred epithets with snake-like accuracy: their writings are full of meditative cigarettes, thoughtful forkfuls, lonely breakfasts and feet that take steps in the right direction but don’t go far enough. They share a deep feeling for the rhythm of dialogue, the musicality of words, and neither is afraid of a compound sentence, full of parenthetical phrases and subordinate clauses that zig from high thought to low gag. As I got deeper into their work, it became clear that they shared another similarity: they each wrote what are essentially variations on a constant theme. In every Chandler story you have an (invariably blond) femme fatale, a corrupt millionaire, a blackmailing low-life, a mobster who despite being ruthless also is capable of a kind of love, an unreliable client, a missing loved one and the square-jawed detective to sort it all out. In each of Wodehouse’s adventures one finds some combination of: an inept bachelor, an alluring blond (or brunette, or redhead), an overbearing aunt, a case of mistaken identity and a highly effective Butler/Secretary/Uncle/Godfather/Best Friend to sort it all out. Some critics assert that their repeated and strict use of formula makes them lesser artists. This is shallow, nonsensical thinking. Austen and Shakespeare adhered to strict formulas; as of course did Bach and the Beatles – as Douglas Adams put it, in an essay about Wodehouse: ‘It matters not one whit that he writes endless variations on a theme… . He is the greatest musician of the English language, and exploring variations of familiar material is what musicians do all day.’ To put it another way: a chessboard always has the same set of pieces on it and they each obey strict rules, but that in no way limits the endless variety, beauty and appeal of the endless games waiting to be played, and Wodehouse and Chandler were both grandmasters. So how did it come to be that these two writers, working in very different genres on different sides of the Atlantic, have such overlap in style and form? This was the mystery I set about solving. Fortunately, no hard streets needed to be traversed, nor tough-guys interrogated. Google gave me my answer in seconds: Chandler and Wodehouse were contemporaries at Dulwich College in South London. They were schoolmates. That news, as you might imagine, played happily into my fantasies. They were childhood friends! Of course they were; perhaps like my father and his pals or like Amis & Co. they had spent the subsequent decades meeting over lunch and exchanging manuscripts. If so, they were the platonic ideal of my dream, a duo ascending from the school yard to literary dominion, together. Further research and reality quickly intruded: it turns out that the two only overlapped for one brief term, in 1900. There is no account of them meeting or even being aware of each other either at school or in their later lives. So much for my fantasy. I kept digging, though. The truth, as it often is, turns out to be both simpler and more profound than our imaginations. These two great masters may not have learnt from each other – but they were both taught by the same teachers. At Dulwich, seven years apart, they were instructed in Latin and Greek by the Classics teacher Phillip Hope and by the Headmaster, A.H. Gilkes, both men of fearsome scholarship and linguistic felicity. By ‘instructed’ read, immersed. Under Gilkes and Hope, the boys copied Virgil and Livy out by the yard, memorized pages of verse and free-translated, under the threat of the ruler, until they could each compose as fluently in Latin and Greek as they did in English. In later life, as pointed out by the classicist Kathleen Riley, both writers acknowledge this debt explicitly; Chandler saying: ‘it would seem that a classical education might be a rather poor basis for writing novels in a hardboiled vernacular. I happen to think otherwise,’ whilst Wodehouse was clear that his schooling ‘on the Classical side… was the best form of education I could have had as a writer.’ As a writer myself who has benefited, from the school yard to this day, from great teachers and mentors, the unearthing of this story is better than fantasy. Teachers, it turns out, matter. (That Nigel Farage also attended Dulwich, we will regard as the exception that proves the rule. He will be lost and forgotten whilst Marlowe and Jeeves live immortal.) And yet… the romantic in me wants to discover that Plum and Ray were friends after all, that they read each other’s work and swapped similes and reminisced about the production of Aristophanes’ Frogs in which they played Tadpole 1 and Tadpole 2. Alas, other than the hallucinations of ChatGPT, no such evidence seems to exist, but then I remembered Wodehouse’s own description of his books and where they sat in the spectrum of literature: ‘I believe there are two ways of writing novels. One is mine, making a sort of musical comedy without music, and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going right deep down into life and not caring a damn.’ Two ways of writing novels, says Wodehouse. My way and Chandler’s way. Maybe the two old masters knew each other after all. *** View the full article

Lies, revenge, murder. Why is it when the perpetrators are a couple, the sum of darkness generated is greater than its two contributing parts? The bedrock of romantic love is two people connecting through emotional honesty and trust. When writers twist these foundations, emotional honesty means finding someone to whom you can finally reveal your bleakest predilections or deepest shame. Trust means having faith your partner won’t tell; they may even enable you. Elle and Dom, the central couple in my latest thriller, The Marriage Rule, appear to most of the world an enviable couple. Elle has an adorable baby girl, and an adoring husband, someone she can turn to when she needs to extract herself from a murder scene, one she’s apparently created. I realized, as I wrote the story, how convincingly a married couple, and a marriage itself, can either obscure crimes from public view or allow wrongs to hide in plain sight. Does Elle’s determination to please Dom speak of devotion or terror? Does Dom’s commitment to supporting Elle in her darkest hour show the greatest care or dark control? The collision of criminality and coupledom in fiction has long made misdemeanours more subversive than those executed by a single culprit. ‘Stars, hide your fires/Let not light see my black and deep desires.’ While Macbeth wishes the cosmos ignorance of his ambitions to be King of Scotland, his wife knows all. Lady Macbeth stokes her husband’s worst instincts, inciting him to murder to take the throne. The pair are the original couple who kill. They pave the way for the archetype of the driven, scheming wife and the morally uncertain husband, deployed to dazzling effect in in Samantha Downing’s barnstorming 2019 thriller My Lovely Wife. While the couple’s kills are orchestrated and executed by the pair, it’s Millicent who dominates proceedings. ‘Her eyes are green, many shades of green, and they look like camouflage,’ so says her enthralled, nameless husband. The novel crackles with the marriage’s sick energy, as they select their victims and the husband narrator looks back at the genesis of his relationship with Millicent, peeling back her layers, before she frames him for being a lone serial killer. ‘If we do this right…the police will never even think to look for a couple. We’ll be free to do whatever we want,’ Millicent tells her husband near the start of the story. For a time, the same principle applies to Carl and Sandy Henderson, the serial-killing couple in Donald Ray Pollock’s chilling exploration of sin and trauma in post-war, rural Ohio, The Devil All The Time (2011). In one strand of this gothic crime epic, we meet a psychotic couple masquerading as regular smalltown sweethearts. The pair pick up their hitchhiker prey, rape, murder and mutilate them. Much of the profoundly grisly action is caught on camera by Carl. The reader is invited to consider whether they could carry out their killing sprees alone – Sandy may experience a guilt that Carl doesn’t and there is some coercion by the husband of the pair, but it’s Sandy who lures their ‘models’ to their deaths and her corrupt sheriff brother who facilitates their unchecked reign of terror. But it’s not only murder that couples may mask more readily than singletons. In Kia Abdullah’s knotty neighborhood noir Those People Next Door/Perfectly Nice Neighbors (2023) the weaponized defensiveness and out-and-out prejudice of White English couple Tom and Willa is the transgression that propels the plot forward. In a novel of morally complex couples, events escalate after Tom ‘accidentally on purpose’ ensures a Black Lives Matter banner is no longer on display in their British Bangladeshi neighbors’ Salma and Bil’s front garden. The gesture feels like an externalization of the couple’s passive aggression, one that barely hides the deeply held hostility Tom and Willa have for their neighbours. When your other half facilitates, rather than keeps in check, your worst character traits, wrongdoings are both more likely to happen and be viewed by our dysfunctional couples as right and valid. Tom and Willa reframe their intolerance as somehow the fault of their targets, with Tom telling Salma as the war begins in earnest, ‘You really love playing the victim,’ while later in the novel, Willa tells her, ‘Jesus, you like being angry, don’t you?’ Finally, the transgressive partnership in Sarah Waters superb Fingersmith (2002), a crime story set in Victorian London, represents a different take. Sue and Maud are the pawns in a plot to profit from an elaborate double-crossing scheme. Their misdemeanour in the context of the era and the scheme is to fall in love. *** View the full article

STORY STATEMENT: Thomas Mather must discover the identities of the two men whose autopsies he has witnessed and then find their killer in order to clear his brother’s name and restore his family’s reputation. ANTAGONISTIC FORCES: The first and most obvious antagonist is Dr. William Shippen, chief lecturer at the Pennsylvania School Medicine. He does not accept Mather’s insistence that the deaths of the two autopsy subjects are related. He vehemently discourages Mather from pursuing any action that will distract him from his studies. Ultimately, he expels Mather from school and causes him to be evicted from the guest house where he lodges. Shippen takes his profession seriously and is extremely protective of the medical school he has helped found. He at first believes Mather might be a potentially great physician, but he cannot tolerate what he perceives to be Mather’s frivolity and lack of mental discipline. BREAKOUT TITLE(S): Still got nothing better than: Assassination of Titans COMPARABLES: Strongest comp is still the AMC 2014-2017 television series Turn: Washington’s Spies, based on Alexander Rose's 2007 Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring (2007). Dramatizes actual historical events but takes some liberties by collapsing events, altering timelines, and combining characters for narrative purpose. Values authenticity more than accuracy (Credit to Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club, etc., for that phrase). Laurie Halse Anderson’s Rebellion 1776 (2025) might also compare nicely. Focuses on fictional people caught up in early-United States historical events with a nod to contemporary issues. FIFTH ASSIGNMENT: Philadelphia, May 1787: When the subjects of two autopsies resemble a murder for which his brother was hanged, young medical student Thomas Mather’s investigation stumbles upon a plot that threatens his standing in the school, the life of General George Washington, and the very future of the United States. SIXTH ASSIGNMENT: Mather’s primary inner conflict stems from his family background. He is the only one of his parents’ seven sons to live to adulthood. Four years earlier – in March of 1783 – his older brother, Andrew, was accused of shooting a young man of their community. He was tried, convicted, and hanged for that murder. He and his parents became pariahs in their community. Mather, as the parents’ one surviving child, assumed the responsibility of somehow restoring his family’s reputation. This is one of his motivations for choosing medicine as a career and a significant reason it is so devastating when he is expelled from school. When he recognizes the circumstances of the deaths of his two autopsy subjects, he becomes fully convinced of his brother’s innocence and his need to exonerate him. There are a few “triggering events” in the novel that reveal Mather’s inner conflict as well as providing clues to the ultimate solution: 1. he experiences severe physical illness as the body of each of the autopsy subjects is revealed; 2. he experiences a similar reaction when the body of Obedience Dyer is found to have been killed in much the same way as the others; 3. he reacts violently when he recognizes Jeremiah Whittier/Gideon Jones as the mysterious man on the horse present at the scene of the first murder in 1783. Finally, Mather’s goal is complicated by the simple fact that no one else even knows that there has been a series of related murders, especially recent murders that might be related to a years-old case that is believed to have been solved. Thus, it is understandable that Dr. Shippen and Mrs. Hoames are so impatient with him. As the stakes increase and broaden, Mather’s sense of helpless isolation intensifies. Only his friends Caleb Freeborn and Riona accept his claims and offer him any help. FINAL ASSIGNMENT: In the early spring of 1787, the city of Philadelphia sat, poised like an orphan, her tattered clothes scrubbed, mended, and pressed into a poor semblance of presentability to impress her prospective parents. The war years had not been kind to the once-thriving commerce town: the British blockade had choked the city’s finances, and the British occupation had choked its soul. And the years after the Revolution had not been much kinder. Trade was still stifled. The states that Philadelphia merchants would trade with found it more profitable to deal directly with European powers. Even the western counties of Pennsylvania found it easier to ship via the Susquehanna River and trade through Baltimore than to transport their goods over the mountains to the Delaware River port. To add insult to injury, Congress had abandoned its home city like a prodigal son. The provenance of the Declaration of Independence, the site of the nation’s first library and first hospital, was no longer the seat of the United States in Congress Assembled. That distinct honor had been transferred to New York, and the slight cut the wounded dignity of the city’s leaders – and their purses as well. And the Bell – the city’s treasured Bell – had been removed from its home and sent into hiding during the British occupation. When the occupation ended, and the Bell was brought home, its perch atop the State House was deemed decrepit. The entire steeple was torn down, replaced by a simple spire. Now, the humiliated Bell huddled in a corner of the yard, brought out on special occasions like an eccentric aunt. Granted, there had been signs of recovery, and the hammers of industry were gradually being heard in more and more sections. Slowly, block by block, streets were being re-cobbled, public buildings were being washed and painted, boarded windows repaned, and roofs mended so that their tiles shone in the morning sun. But recovery was slow, and hope was dim. The promise of the Revolution seemed about to die in its cradle, and there were those who had to admit that their city – which had proudly served as midwife to that new American nation – was tired and shabby and about to unravel, just as the new nation it had birthed was. Even Caleb Freeborn had heard of the revolts in Massachusetts the year before. Shay’s rebellion they called it – something to do with banks and farmers. Caleb did not understand it, but he knew that such rebellions so soon after the Revolution were bad signs for the new nation. He’d listened to the Reverend Allen’s sermons condemning the slave trade and the exportation of distilled spirits to Africa where the slaves came from. He’d heard “the Missus” complain about the cost of sugar and flour and the unavailability of cloth goods. He’d heard the guests who passed him at the door as they entered and exited the Indian Queen Tavern, talking as if he weren’t there. They talked of Spain threatening the South and West, England still threatening the North, and France always wanting to expand her American Empire. He himself had witnessed, four years earlier, the revolt that had sent Congress fleeing to Princeton and then to New York. Unhappy soldiers from the War surrounded the State House and held Congress essentially hostage inside. Fortunately, violence had been averted then, but one way or another, it seemed, the thirteen states were going to have to fight another war. Some people expressed a vague optimism about the Federal Convention that was set to begin – in Philadelphia, where such an important event should occur. While most of the city accepted the official account – that the convention had been called with the sole purpose of mending the flaws in the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union – Caleb had heard it whispered that really they were planning another Revolution. The anxiety in the city was high, and merchant and statesman alike debated the advisability of simply maintaining the status quo rather than possibly yielding up any of their state’s and their city’s hard-won rights. During the course of the story, there are two public demonstrations that threaten to break out into dangerous violence. The first protests the Congress of the Confederation’s unwillingness to make good on their promise to veterans of the Revolution (especially disgruntled former officers) to pay money owed and provide at least some portion of their agreed-upon pensions. The other protests the Federal Convention itself, which they view as an attempt by the higher echelons of society to consolidate their power and establish an American aristocracy, possibly even a monarchy with George Washington as the king.

To make history, all you need is to overcome the past ... Late April 1787 The chief virtue of the hunter is patience. The next is endurance. Whether stalking the prey or lying in wait, the important thing was to … wait. To reveal one’s presence too soon, to fire too early would mean to allow the prey to escape and the hunt to fail. This hunt had been a lie-in-wait. For three bitterly cold days, the hunter had sat perched on a lower limb of the still winter bare maple tree, waiting for the quarry to arrive. This was where he would have to come. This was where the river narrowed and grew shallow. The tide still affected the depth of the water so at low tide, one could walk across in water barely knee deep. And this was where the inn was – where the expected prey would find a warm meal and a comfortable bed. A small flock of birds fluttered and twittered from a tree at the water’s edge. Something was in the river, crossing the river, about to reach the shore. The hunter raised the rifle and peered down the long barrel. The hand that squeezed the trigger was calm and steady. The single, sharp crack ripped the morning. The acrid smoke smelled of triumph and defeat, and the report’s echo reverberated up and down the river as if to announce that the deed was done. This deed was done. The unsuspecting quarry stopped in mid-step. The hunter could not read the man’s face because the face was now a shambles of blood and flesh. He imagined the expression would have been surprise. Surprise and horror. The dead man dropped to his knees and then fell face-down into the shallow water. The echo of the one shot faded, and everything was once again silent. The hunter scrambled down from the tree and sprinted to the corpse. The satchel the man had been carrying held a small packet of papers folded and sealed with wax. These the hunter secured in an inner cloak pocket. Nimble fingers untied laces and worked buttons. Before long, the body had been stripped of its clothing. Coat, vest, shirt, and breeches were rolled into a threadbare shoulder sack. When everything was gathered up, the dead man’s killer retreated into the trees, leaving the naked corpse to whatever the birds, the beasts, and the weather might do to it. Monday, May 7, 1787 Thomas Mather could not look away from the corpse. The flames of the oil lamps at the head and the foot of the examination table cast gruesome shadows that danced on the bloated flesh. “Gentlemen,” Chief Surgeon Doctor William Shippen announced in the resonant baritone of a stage performer, “despite the outward appearance of our specimen and the fact that this unfortunate fellow was discovered floating in the Delaware River, I am encouraged to hope that the temperature of the water may have slowed the corruption process, and our friend’s relevant organs may be better preserved than those I have been able to show in some time.” Mather heard his teacher’s voice, but the corpse just lay there indifferent. He was new to the Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and this was his first autopsia cadaverum, his first anatomical examination of a human cadaver. As excited as he was to be beginning his studies, he also feared that the sick feeling deep in his stomach was not due only to anticipation. The great doctor was still talking, but the only facts Mather comprehended were the body on the table in the center of a small cluster of medical residents and the bile rising in his throat. He pressed his hand to his mouth and forced the acid back down with a cough. Shippen took up a scalpel and cut an incision, deep and straight, from the top of the cadaver’s right shoulder to the bottom of his sternum. “During the reign of the infamous Bloody Mary of England,” he continued, “the Reverend Thomas Becon wrote that the dead can reveal no secrets. But the good Mr. Becon was mistaken. There is a great deal that the living can learn from the dead.” The dead man’s head was completely concealed in a cotton sack – just as someone condemned to the gallows would be hooded before having his head slipped into the noose. The colorless torso shone with a yellow sheen. “In fact,” Shippen continued, “as early as 44 B.C., the Roman physician Antistius was able to determine that, of the twenty-three stab wounds dealt Julius Caesar, only one was fatal – delivered directly to Mr. Caesar’s sternum.” He indicated the chest of the dead man on the table. “I rather suspect that this fatal blow was delivered by none other than Brutus himself, thus evoking Caesar’s famous, ‘Et tu, Brute?’” He looked around at the half-dozen medical students who stared back, puzzled by the digression. “Then…of course … fall Caesar.” “How did this man die, Dr. Shippen?” the student beside Mather asked. “Did he drown?” Shippen had just begun a second incision, identical to the first, this one beginning at the left shoulder. He paused and peered curiously at the student. “Why would you ask that?” The student shifted as if he were trying to hide behind Mather. “I’m sorry, sir. Just curious.” “I will admit that there is ample evidence to suggest a drowning death, though I doubt many of you yet know what that evidence is.” He looked up at his class. “Since the opportunity presents itself, however, if you are interested –” Several of the students nodded eagerly, and there were a few whispers of assent. “All right, then,” the doctor continued. “Note, for example, the maceration of the skin –” He set the scalpel on the table beside the body. “– the wrinkling of the fingers and the palm of the hand. You have probably noticed a similar effect on the skin of a laundress whose hands have spent too much time in the wash water.” Mather felt another gush of acid. He did not look like one subject to fainting, yet he felt the room darken and shrink around him. The floor shifted beneath his feet. “Observe the curtis anserina – the gooseflesh – on the arms – ” Shippen draped the arm over the body’s torso, but it slid and dropped to the side of the table, swinging like a pendulum. “ – and the legs.” “Dr. Shippen,” another eager-voiced student interrupted, “why would the legs reveal the same gooseflesh as the arms and the toes...the same...well, the same wrinkling as the fingers. Even underwater, wouldn’t these parts have been protected by the man’s boots?” Shippen thought not to reprimand the student for the interruption and instead simply answer the question. “One might think, yes. However, the curious truth is that this corpse was in a state of complete undress when it was discovered.” “He was naked?” Mather asked. “Indeed,” Shippen replied. “As naked as the day he was born. Now ...” He adjusted his spectacles on the bridge of his nose. “What are we to learn from that detail?” “Perhaps he was bathing when he met his demise.” “Too cold. More likely his clothing was stolen by some vagrant.” Shippen entertained each guess with a cheerless chuckle and a shake of his head. He was a serious-looking man with mournful eyes. “But how did he die?” “And how did he come to be floating naked in the Delaware River?” Shippen made a show of impatience, but his long face revealed a glimmer of amusement. “How he came to be floating naked in the river is indeed a mystery. However, the probable cause of death is considerably easier to determine.” With a dramatic flourish, he pulled off the cotton sack that had hidden the cadaver’s head. The entire cluster of students – even those nearing the completion of their education – gasped. The bottom of the man’s face was gone, the jawbone shattered, a gaping hole of raw flesh where the mouth should have been. Shippen then turned the man’s head away from the class. The back of the head was more intact, revealing only one small hole – the size of a peach pit – toward the top of his skull. Mather gasped audibly and fell backward into the student behind him. “He was shot!” someone shouted. The young man Mather had stumbled into shoved him forward and into the student who had just spoken. “Indeed,” Shippen agreed, unaware of the growing disturbance in his demonstration theater. “However, we still cannot be certain whether he was shot while he still breathed or after he was already dead.” “But who would shoot a dead man?” someone toward the back asked. Shippen replaced the sack over the corpse’s head. “We might just as well ask who would shoot a living man.” Muttering an apology, Mather righted himself and staggered up the shallow steps toward the back of the theater. As soon as he passed into the corridor, he bent over double and emptied the contents of his stomach. Shippen pondered the dead man on the table before him. “Interesting as all of this might be, it is neither hither nor thither for our intents and purposes. The time may indeed come when you are called upon to dissect a corpse to aid in an inquiry into the cause and manner of death. But today we are interested only in learning what this poor man has to tell us about saving the living.” He took up the scalpel and completed his incisions, forming a gigantic Y that spanned the corpse’s chest and abdomen. He then produced a small saw – not unlike one a skilled wood carver might use – and began to cut carefully through the exposed sternum and rib cage. The waning moon set early on the night of Thomas Mather’s first autopsy, and a gauzy mist from the river obliterated the feeble candlelight from the street lanterns. No one within the boarding establishment of Mrs. Martha Hoames at 180 High Street heard the carriage pull up to the curb and then drive away again. No one inside saw the carriage’s solitary passenger pause on the walk and cock his head to listen as the bell of the Pennsylvania State House clock chimed the quarter hour. The State House stood only in the next block, but the melancholy toll sounded far, far away. No one inside heard the visitor exhale an anxious sigh as he retrieved his bag and stepped up to the great dark house’s front door. The boots that climbed the stoop were immaculately polished. The hand that reached for the knocker was fashionably gloved, and the bright, metallic rap of the knocker was quick and polite. Sensing no movement in the house in response to his knock, the late traveler raised the brass ring a second time and let it fall more urgently. Finally, he heard the click of a lock and the clack of a bolt, and the door swung open. “Beg pardon, sir.” The girl who answered the door was young. Pretty. Her face was well-scrubbed, and the Irish in her voice was thick and musical. “We warn’t shirr we heard a knock until ye’ knocked again, and then we war’ shirr.” The caller removed his tricorne hat and bowed his head deeply. He was a handsome man, boyish wisps of sand-colored hair carefully gathered behind his head in a ribbon of silk. His eyes were wide and clear and vivid blue. “I do apologize for the lateness of my arrival,” he said. His voice was so soft that the girl had to turn her head and lean toward him to hear. “But the roads are so bad, and I almost feared I would not make it tonight.” The girl offered a clumsy curtsey. “Yes sir. And who should I tell the Missus has arrived?” “You must be new.” He studied her face with condescending amusement. “What is your name?” She curtseyed again. “Riona, sir.” “Riona.” He scraped the mud from his boots and stepped past the girl and into Mrs. Hoames’ bright front hall. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, like someone returning home after a long journey. “I am James Madison,” he explained. “Would you please tell your mistress that I have returned?” Across the High Street, a bulky shadow watched the rectangle of yellow light disappear as the door to the guest house closed. He stared several minutes at the space where the light had been and then turned toward the river. He thought he heard someone whistling. Someone behind him. A simple ditty. Pausing, he cocked his head like a dog. After what seemed like a very long time, he heard it again – unmistakable whistling, the same tune only this time a half-step down. It was an old shanty – about a drunken sailor. The third line followed immediately, more or less a repeat of the first. The man who’d watched James Madison’s arrival glanced to his left and right and then whistled the final five notes, completing the verse. From out of nowhere a young urchin stood beside him and grasped his hand. “A penny for a fatherless boy, sir?” he asked. “Killed by the British just five year ago tomorrow … ” The man fumbled for his purse, but the boy let go of his hand and disappeared into the fog as quickly as he’d appeared. The Drunken Sailor, the man whispered to himself. Five o’clock tomorrow. Again looking around him, he continued on his way toward the Delaware River. It was a night of restless dreams for Thomas Mather. He saw the naked corpse on the table in Dr. Shippen’s demonstration theater. But he wasn’t in the dark classroom. This body lay in a sunny field aglow with yellow crocuses. A mask of congealed blood glossed the raw flesh that had once been a face. Come away, Thomas! He stood, transfixed by the naked body that, but for the face, could have been napping on a pleasant afternoon in the meadow. Thomas! A strong hand clutched his upper arm and pulled him. Still, he could not look away from the dead man sleeping in the crocuses.

Marann Santana_Opening Pages.pdf

Summer is coming! And in some parts of the country, it’s already here. And that means that summer thriller season has arrived. We hope the following titles will provide comfort and distraction during this garbage fire of a year—whatever your taste, you’ll find something special. In particular, this summer brings a plethora of legal thrillers, books in which women cooperate to commit murder, and lots of crimes on trains. And unlike some other recent summer lists out there, all of these books are 100% real. Enjoy! ___________________________________ JUNE ___________________________________ Rob Hart, The Medusa Protocol (Putnam) Hart is back this summer in style with a new installment of the Assassins Anonymous series, the killers-in-recovery novels that bring a wild new energy to the world of highly-trained Bourne-like professionals. Hart delivers another high-octane story laced with regret and introspection. –DM Riley Sager, With a Vengeance (Dutton) Riley Sager is back, this time with a classic Golden Era setup—a young woman has gathered her enemies on a train, determined to make them pay for the destruction of her family by forcing them to confess to their crimes. Her plan quickly hits a snag when the passengers begin dying before they have a chance to come clean. Is someone else seeking a separate vengeance? Or has one of the passengers decided to eliminate anyone who can testify against them? –MO Douglas Lincoln and Preston Childs, Badlands (Putnam) In this new thriller from Lincoln and Childs, a woman dies of heatstroke and thirst deep in the desert, clutching a pair of mysterious artifacts. Soon enough, archaeologist Nora Kelly and FBI Agent Corrie Swanson are on the case, as the authors deliver another high-stakes mystery steeped in lore and legend.–DM Laurie R. King, Knave of Diamonds (Bantam) I’ve been reading Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell series for 20 years, and a new installment is always a treat. In King’s latest, her father’s black sheep brother reappears after decades to ask for her assistance, and to request she keep her husband Sherlock in the dark (of course she will do no such thing). There are crown jewels involved, and some nefarious plans from Mycroft Holmes, and many shenanigans. –MO Olivia Worley, So Happy Together (Minotaur) Olivia Worley has wowed me with her YA thrillers, and her new novel for adults is just as wickedly entertaining. In a novel twist on the trend of female obsession, Worley’s heroine isn’t ready to let her ex-boyfriend go, despite his obvious happiness with his new-found love. When she starts to investigate her replacement, she’s not prepared for what she uncovers, a dark secret that soon leads to a shocking (and satisfying) denouement. –MO Peter Swanson, Kill Your Darlings (William Morrow) A married couple living a seemingly idyllic life is at the center of the masterful new mystery from Peter Swanson, Kill Your Darlings, but there’s a catch: the wife would very much like to murder her husband. Swanson tells the story in reverse, building back to the key moments that drove them to that fateful point. The novel is a marvel of structure and pacing and delivers some of the most satisfying turns in recent memory. –DM Danie Shokoohi, Glass Girls (Zando – Gillian Flynn Books) While I’ve read plenty of novels featuring spiritual mediums, this one hit me right in the ectoplasm. Danie Shokoohi’s haunting meditation on grief, motherhood, and fragility takes us into the terrifying childhood of two sisters tasked with using their inherited magic to keep their brother alive. The only problem? Every book born to a woman in the Glass family dies before the age of 20. Despite their traumatic upbringing, the sisters must reunite as adults and tap back into their mystical powers: this time not to save anyone from death, but to help an angered ghost pass on. A visceral, blood-soaked paean to the horrors and limits of love. –MO Kristen L. Berry, We Don’t Talk About Carol (Bantam) Kristen L. Berry’s explosive debut tracks the long and buried history of missing young Black girls through a singular protagonist: one bent on finding out the truth behind her aunt’s long-ago disappearance. We Don’t Talk About Carol is sure to be one of the devastating—and necessary—stories published this year. –MO Laura Lippman, Murder Takes a Vacation (William Morrow) Mrs. Blossom, former assistant to iconic PI Tess Monaghan, gets the spotlight in this latest novel from crime master Laura Lippman, whose fresh take on the traditional mystery sees our hero on a cruise through France with a rich cast of shady characters and some mysterious art to boot. This is a stellar, page-turner of a mystery. –DM Erin Dunn, He’s to Die For (Minotaur) I’m about halfway through this one and I am shipping those leads. Billed as “Brooklyn-99 but make it queer romance”, He’s to Die For features a debonair detective who’s falling head over heels for a rock star—one who just happens to be suspected of murder. And if they don’t get together, I may be forced to *sigh* write some fan fiction. –MO SA Cosby, King of Ashes (Flatiron) A Virginia crematorium and a family on the brink are at the center of the latest standout offering from crime fiction powerhouse S.A. Cosby. The Carruthers family is one readers won’t soon forget, and Cosby’s hero, Roman Carruthers, with his financial savvy and family debts, offers up a compelling portrait of duty and defiance. –DM Ivy Pochoda, Ecstasy (Putnam) Ivy Pochoda’s new horror novel, Ecstasy, takes place at an exclusive new establishment that may also be home to an ancient Greek god. Pochoda’s protagonist arrives muted and depressed; a group of women engaged in strange rituals may just be the pick-me-up she needs to get out of her funk (and into the service of the aforementioned deity).–MO James Lee Burke, Don’t Forget Me Little Bessie (Atlantic Crime) Burke, crime fiction’s foremost chronicler of the American experience, returns this year with a powerhouse novel following a woman’s saga from early twentieth century Texas to New York City, set against the backdrop of sweeping historical forces and environmental degradation. Burke novels are appointment reading for serious mystery readers around the world. –DM Miranda Smith, Smile for the Cameras (Ballantine) I can’t get enough of thrillers centered on horror films (neither can our readers!), and with the final installment of the Final Destination series quickly approaching, I’m ready for a scary novel about the long-delayed reboot of a venerable franchise, filmed in the same gothic locale as the original movies, despite rumors of hauntings. Of course, things go awry immediately, and the disastrous events on-set seem to mimic the original film’s gory plot. Can Smith’s heroine prove she can survive as a final girl IRL? I can’t wait to find out! Also, for more horror-film-themed fiction, look out for The October Film Haunt, coming out later this year. –MO Lisa Jewell, Don’t Let Him In (Atria) Lisa Jewell has steadily proven herself one of the best writers of psychological thrillers today, and her upcoming novel, featuring a nasty Lonely Hearts confidence man, looks to be her most astute study of human nature yet. In Don’t Let Him In, one man connects several disparate families, each ruined (or about to be) by his financial scheming. The true villain of Don’t Let Him In is the patriarchy and double standards that allow a smooth, charming, older man to give wealthy widows the bare minimum of good treatment and still seem nicer than 99% of other dudes. Despite the length, I swear you’ll finish this one in a single weekend. –MO Megan Abbott, El Dorado Drive (Putnam) In Megan Abbott’s provocative new thriller, a group of women committed to helping one another financially takes a dark turn and puts the lives of two sisters in jeopardy. Abbott is among the most gifted stylists at work in crime fiction today, and she brings a poetic appreciation for flawed humanity to her new novel, which is as atmospheric and compelling as any of her best books. –DM Richard Van Camp, Beast (Douglas & McIntyre) This book looks so cool! Billed as the “Indigenous Stranger Things”, Richard Van Camp’s Beast follows the desperate efforts of a group of First Nations teenagers tasked with defeating an evil peace-treaty-devouring spirit before it can cause new destruction to their Northwest Territories communities. Since the novel is Canadian and set in the 1980s, expect many Degrassi references. –MO Mailan Doquang, Ceylon Sapphires (Mysterious Press) Ceylon Sapphires picks up the adventures of Rune Sarasin, the ingenious young thief out of Bangkok, lately working the European circuit. The action bounces between European hot spots and unspools a gripping cat and mouse game between thief and smuggler. –DM Dwyer Murphy, The House on Buzzards Bay (Viking) You can always count on CrimeReads Editor-in-Chief Dwyer Murphy for atmospheric, clever, and thoroughly engrossing novels, and I have no doubt that his latest…will be as good as I’ve come to expect. It concerns a group of middle-aged friends, brought back together for a reunion in the titular house on Buzzards Bay, all fun and games until one of them (the writer, of course) disappears. Then there are the mysterious break-ins in the town, the odd happenings in the house, the stranger at the door—yep, it’s a Dwyer Murphy novel, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it. –Emily Temple, Lit Hub Managing Editor Vaishnavi Patel, Ten Incarnations of Rebellion (Ballantine) In this epic alternative history of Indian independence, the movements of the 30s and 40s are brutally suppressed to the point of failure, and it is the next generation, in the 1960s, who must take up the mantle of revolution and overthrow their colonial masters. The book is arranged in ten chapters referencing incidents in the life of Vishnu, adding cultural depth to an already-compelling narrative.–MO Kaira Rouda, Jill Is Not Happy (Scarlet) Rouda’s new thriller is a perfect summer thriller: a husband and wife road trip that stirs up old secrets and pins the spouses against one another in a dangerous game. –DM Janelle Brown, What Kind of Paradise (Random House) Maybe it’s just Luigi Fever, but here’s yet another novel featuring a Kaczynski-inspired character (last year brought us the inimitable Old King by Maxim Loskutoff, a noir told from the perspective of Ted’s very unhappy neighbors). In What Kind of Paradise, a young woman flees from her idyllic upbringing in the Montana wilderness after she’s unwittingly roped into her technophobe father’s deadly schemes. She’s on the way to San Francisco, where her parents met, her mother died, and the seeds to her childhood traumas first took root. –MO Kate Khavari, A Botanist’s Guide to Rituals and Revenge (Crooked Lane) Botannist Saffron Everleigh is back this summer with a new mystery involving a government agent posing as a doctor. Khavari’s mysteries are something of the most cleverly plotted and charmingly told books you’ll find anywhere. –DM Nilima Rao, A Shipwreck in Fiji (Soho) In the second installment of her absurdly charming new series, Nilima Rao takes us to Ovalau, a neighboring island, where rumors of German soldiers doing reconnaissance abound, and a missing Fijian could throw the delicate colonialist politics of the nation into disarray. Rao once again blends history, humor, and heartfelt drama for what has quickly become my favorite historical series of the last ten years. –MO ___________________________________ JULY ___________________________________ Zoe B. Wallbrook, History Lessons (Soho) An ode to academic curiosity, in the form of a mystery novel! In History Lessons, a new professor gets mixed up in a murder case when her star professor colleague is murdered, just after sending her an enigmatic text that could be the key to cracking the case. She must solve the crime to free herself from suspicion, but mostly because she’s an academic, and they cannot leave an unsolved mystery alone. At a time when higher education is under siege, this novel will help you remember why we need (and love) the humanities. –MO Joe Pan, Florida Palms (Simon & Schuster) In this debut novel, a group of friends in need of work move into the orbit of a biker gang and start running designer drugs up and down the East Coast. It’s a dark coming-of-age novel with ambitious scope and a compelling set of characters. –DM Holly Jackson, Not Quite Dead (Bantam) Holly Jackson’s adult debut is a countdown thriller with teeth. After a lackadaisical and somewhat lazy law school dropout gets hit on the head by a mysterious antagonist, she’s got seven days to solve her own murder before an aneurism finishes what her attacker started. What would you do if you had only seven days to live? I would personally just give up, but then again, I’m not a heroine in a detective novel. –MO Dan Fesperman, Pariah (Knopf) Fesperman writes some of the best modern-day espionage around, and his latest novel takes some wild turns that will keep readers enthralled. A comic / politician is enlisted for a complicated mission to Eastern Europe, where one of his biggest fans happens to be the dictator whose inner circle US intel wants penetrated. –DM Craig DiLouie, My Ex, The Antichrist (Run for It) This book is one of several this year to feature things getting hot and heavy with the lords of the underworld. Craig DiLouie’s new novel is a particularly fun take on the rise of religious horror. Metal band The Shivers, self-described as a “demon disco” ensemble, find out their lead guitarist is the antichrist after a series of violent riots break out at their live shows. When the guitarist leaves to form another band, the Shivers must pivot to the only musical style capable of preventing the apocalypse: pop punk. Honestly, makes sense! –MO Gabriel Urza, The Silver State (Algonquin) In Urza’s new novel, a public defender receives a letter from a client on death row and the world subsequently drops out from beneath him, as he’s forced to reexamine an old case, a disappearance, and his own role in the case. Urza is a supremely talented storyteller with a subversive take on the classic legal thriller, turning the form on its head while still maintaining all the propulsive suspense these novels have to offer, and shocking readers with what they’ll find. –DM Ruth Ware, The Woman in Suite 11 (Gallery/Scout) I’m very much looking forward to reading The Woman in Suite 11, Ruth Ware’s highly anticipated sequel to The Woman in Cabin 10. Lo Blacklock, the unlucky heroine of Ware’s cruise ship thriller, is back to work as a journalist after half a decade spent raising her young children. She’s been invited to a very special hotel opening in Geneva, Switzerland, which will, we assume, go disastrously wrong. –MO Harini Nagendra, Into the Leopard’s Den (Pegasus) Nagendra returns with a new installment of the Bangalore Detectives Club. In the new novel, Kaveri Murthy is resting at home while pregnant when a Bangalore woman dies holding a photograph of her. The case leads her around the city and ultimately toward a reunion with her husband in Coorg, where the mysteries only deepen. Nagendra’s series is a thoughtful crowd-pleaser and satisfyingly steeped in history. –DM Michelle Brandon, Rush Week (Avon) Four estranged friends reunite for their five year sorority reunion at the University of Alabama, but each has a secret agenda for attending the celebration, and each will seek their own vengeance for college wrongs. Through flashbacks, Brandon takes readers inside the cutthroat world of sorority selection, for a fascinating window into a world steeped in traditions, whether charming or deeply problematic. –MO Megan Miranda, You Belong Here (Simon & Schuster/Marysue Rucci) A woman is forced to reckon with the dark secrets of her college days in Megan Miranda’s new thriller, You Belong Here. Miranda is a master of atmospheric thrills, and an elite university in the mountains of Virginia gives her a rich setting to work with. –DM Se-Ah Jang, A Twist of Fate Translated by S.L. Park (Bantam) Two women meet on a train and swap lives (and in the process make me deeply jealous of a nation with fast enough trains to bother using—by the time AmTrak reaches its destination, everyone would have given up on ever changing their fates). –MO Polly Stewart, The Felons Ball (Harper) In this follow-up to Stewart’s acclaimed debut, The Good Ones, tension boils over at an annual birthday summit where a pair of old friends recount past misdeeds for a raucous and appreciative gathering. In The Felons Ball, Stewart paints a lively portrait of small-town secrets and generational entanglements. Stewart is proving herself a master of suspense. –DM Paul Bradley Carr, The Confessions (Atria) While I’d rather live in world without AI, the rapid progression of world-destructive technology certainly is leading writers into fascinating speculative territory. The Confessions is a more moral grappling with technology than most: when a supercomputer goes offline, everyone’s darkest secrets go offline too—and into mailboxes across the globe, accompanied by a command: “We must confess.” –MO Nicci Cloke, Her Many Faces (William Morrow) When a young waitress is accused of murdering four wealthy members of a private club, the nation is riveted, but what spectators see in the story may be more about projection than insight. Her Many Faces follows the tale from the perspectives of five men in the accused killer’s life, each with their own take on her guilt or innocence, and some with their own dark agendas for seeing her convicted. An excellent exploration of a central question: how well can we ever truly know a person? –MO Clémence Michallon, The Last Resort (Knopf) A luxury resort in the Utah desert is the backdrop for Michallon’s sophomore thriller, a close and careful study of relations strained to the breaking point and the weight of old secrets. Michallon is an expert with pacing and delivers readers a thoughtful and compelling mystery. –DM Giano Cromley, American Mythology (Doubleday) Is Bigfoot real? And do we even care when the fictional presumption of his existence is so delightful? In this hilarious send off of conspiracy culture, Crowley takes readers on a romp through the world of American legends and the people who love them. –MO Tasha Coryell, Matchmaking for Psychopaths (Berkley) Tasha Coryell’s debut was one of the highlights of last year, and her new book looks to fully live up to expectations. The protagonist of Matchmaking for Psychopaths is a jilted fiance who works as a…you guessed it…personalized matchmaker for psychopaths looking for love. And after she’s unceremoniously dumped, she starts to spiral, with the help of a handsome new lover with far too many similarities to her clients.–MO David Gordon, Behind Sunset (Mysterious Press) Nobody writes a mystery quite like David Gordon. In his newest, a down on his luck writer goes on a dark odyssey through the pornography and celebrity wellness scenes in 1990s Los Angeles. Behind Sunset is an atmospheric neo-noir with flashes of dark wit. –DM Cherie Priest, It Was Her House First (Poisoned Pen Press) Gotta love a ghost with opinions, especially when too many strangers have already tried to renovate her home, and NOT to her specifications. Cherie Priest’s delightful haunted house novel takes us into a fixer upper filled with fractious ghosts, none of whom are particularly pleased with the new owner’s renovations. I’m hoping everyone starts to work together and the house ends up as a preservationist’s dream. –MO Shari Lapena, She Didn’t See It Coming (Pamela Dorman/Viking) In this new novel from Lapena, a luxury condo building plays host to a locked-room mystery when a wife and mother disappears without a trace. Lapena is a master of psychological suspense, and here she proves a meticulous and compelling plotter, too, as the mystery unfolds just as the walls close in. –DM Alex Pavesi, Ink Ribbon Red (Henry Holt) A group of old friends gather for a birthday party at a manor house owned by the birthday boy, despite the recent death of the manor’s patrician guardian. By the end of the weekend, some guests will predictably end up dead—but which ones? And how shall this locked room spectacle ensue? I can’t wait to find out! –MO Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Bewitching (Del Rey) In Moreno-Garcia’s chilling new novel, a graduate student researching a horror novelist delves into a life-altering mystery and the strange forces surrounding a certain manuscript that ties it all together. Witchcraft and the power of narrative intersect to yield this evocative, powerful tale. –DM Markus Redmond, Blood Slaves (Dafina) Another alternative history! Markus Redmond has crafted a truly epic reimagining of the 19th century, in which an ancient vampire enslaved on a plantation becomes the catalyst for a widespread slave rebellion and violent reckoning with injustice. It’s clear throughout the narrative that the true monsters are not the vampires, who need blood to survive, but the slave-owners, who require human suffering in the name of profit. Redmond’s novel should be one of the most satisfying of the year, and perhaps of the decade. –MO Tess Sharpe, No Body, No Crime (MCD) Tess Sharpe’s latest is exactly what you’d think, based on that Taylor Swift title—women, working together, can cover up achieve anything. In No Body, No Crime, two star-crossed lovers reunite after nearly a decade apart to deal with the fallout from the crime that first brought them together (and drove them apart). –MO Lucas Schaefer, The Slip (Simon & Schuster) “For readers of Jonathan Franzen and Nathan Hill comes a haymaker of an American novel about a missing teenage boy, cases of fluid and mistaken identity, and the transformative power of boxing.” Intrigued? Of course you are, and you should be. Lucas Schaefer’s big, bold, raunchy, tender, comic, philosophical, Austin-set boxing novel is also an unflinching examination of race and sex in America. It’s absolutely bursting with memorable characters and outrageous scenes, and the sentence level writing is nothing short of superb. Truly one of the most impressive debuts I’ve read in years, The Slip is a knockout. –Dan Sheehan, BookMarks Editor-in-Chief Melanie Arnold, How to Survive a Horror Story (Poisoned Pen Press) A disparate group of authors gather at a famous horror writer’s house for the reading of his will, only to discover the house wants to consume them. Forget smart houses—I want a murder house. –MO ___________________________________ AUGUST ___________________________________ Melissa Pace, The Once and Future Me (Henry Holt) This book will blow your mind!!!! It kind of felt like a Marvel movie, but like, one that’s actually good! Pace’s amnesiac heroine, locked up in a mental institution and subjected to strange experimental procedures, must escape her padded prison and find out what exactly she’s forgotten, and what role her husband has played in all this, well, madness. I cannot tell you more without spoilers, but even as someone who reads 150+ books a year, I was genuinely surprised. –MO Alexis Soloski, Flashout (Flatiron) Soloski’s sophomore novel is a stylish, compulsively-readable dual timeline narrative charting a young woman’s journey through the 1970s experimental theater scene, one that starts pretty quickly to look like a cult, and a theater teacher’s efforts in the late 1990s to keep her past hidden. Soloski’s pacing is impeccable and the story is long on atmospherics, with a surprisingly moving coming-of-age story emerging out of the suspense. –DM Cleyvis Natera, The Grand Paloma Resort (Ballantine) Cleyvis Natera blew me away with her debut Neruda in the Park and her sophomore novel is truly the perfect follow-up from White Lotus. Set in a ritzy Dominican resort ostensibly located in a historic community of freedmen from the United States, The Grand Paloma follows staff and guests undergoing a variety of crises as a deadly hurricane approaches, and as characters steadily realize their moral compromises are no longer enough to hold off the twinned destruction of late-stage capitalism and its accompanying environmental collapse. I have feelings about the ending. Mainly I liked it a lot, was completely surprised by it, and need to talk to folks about the book so you all need to read it, finish it, then talk to me about it in like 6 months. Okay? –MO Jo Morey, Lime Juice Money (Harper) In this thrilling, atmospheric debut, a woman trapped in a dangerous relationship finds herself isolated in the Belizean jungle and caught up in a complex orchid smuggling effort linked to decades-old family sins. The title comes from a recurring phrase in the book: “champagne dreams with lime juice money”, eventually discovered to be lyrics to a song played during a significant, and long-forgotten, memory. That contrast—dreams vs. reality—forms the central axis of each character’s development, negotiated well by some and disastrously by others. –MO Thomas R. Weaver, Artificial Wisdom (Del Rey) A grieving journalist is tasked with unraveling a high-profile murder with enormous implications in this disturbingly plausible speculative thriller. The victim? A scientist credited with designing the first AI politician to be elected. The consequences? Who knows! And the secrets that shall be revealed? Dark indeed… I can’t wait to finish this far-reaching vision from a tech insider. –MO Yasuhiko Nishizawa, The Man Who Died Seven Times Translated by Jesse Kirkwood (Pushkin Vertigo) In a murder mystery take on Groundhog Day, a high schooler has seven chances to save his grandfather’s life. Nishizawa’s young hero has always possessed a strange talent: some days are repeated, up to nine times, and whatever happens on the last iteration of the repeating day becomes the new reality. The Man Who Died Seven Times is a metaphysical masterpiece that never hesitates to show both humor and heart. –MO Danielle Valentine, The Dead Husband Cookbook (Sourcebooks Landmark) In this delectable culinary thriller, disgraced editor Thea Woods gets one last chance to restore her reputation when a celebrity chef shows up at her small publisher ready to write a memoir and asking for Thea by name. Thea, a lifelong fan of Maria Capello’s, has never believed those awful rumors about Maria’s husband and his untimely demise, but she may change her mind after a few weeks at Maria’s farm editing the single copy of her manuscript. This book made me so hungry… –MO Amran Gowani, Leverage (Atria) In this masterpiece of late-stage capitalism and its discontents, Amran Gowani uses the crime genre to eviscerate the world of finance and the psychopaths at their center. In Leverage, a successful trader is backed into a corner by his menacing boss after a shocking loss, and forced to embrace deeply unethical practices to make up for his perceived error. All is not as it seems, but even as additional challenges mount, Gowani’s scrappy hero might just be clever enough to carve out a win. This book was so ridiculously good. –MO Sulari Gentill, Five Found Dead (Poisoned Pen Press) In Gentill’s new mystery, Joe Penvale boards the Orient Express in Paris, accompanied by his sister, hoping to find inspiration aboard the train, and inspiration sure comes in quickly, as a series of brutal murders sweeps over the train. Gentill is working in a distinct Christie register, and doing it in high style, in this consistently enjoyable mystery. –DM Amanda Chapman, Mrs. Christie at the Mystery Guild Library (Berkley) Agatha Christie appears from the great beyond to help a library conservationist solve a murder that is yet to happen. I believe that’s all I need to say. –MO Karin Slaughter, We Are All Guilty Here (William Morrow) Thriller stalwart Slaughter is back this summer with a fresh series, focusing on a small town, North Falls, and its many mysteries, beginning with the disappearance of two teenager girls. –DM Samantha Downing, Too Old for This (Berkley) Samantha Downing has been crafting excellent psychological thrillers from the get go, and her latest looks to continue her dominance. Too Old for This has the best set-up: a retired serial killer must go out and kill one last time to avoid discovery. While every year features at least a few older sleuths or slayers, this year really seems to have brought the narrative of elders in crime fiction to its proper…maturity (see what I did there?). I love the idea of an elderly, crotchety killer—think how clever she’d have to be to be able to retire at all! –MO Morgan Richter, The Understudy (Knopf) Richter’s new slow-burn thriller centers on opera singer who has finally secured her place in the upper echelons of the New York scene and the understudy who proves herself to be more than merely a young rival, but something far more dangerous. Richter’s novel is tautly drawn but still full of wonderful detail from the life cycle of a big operatic production, this one an adaptation of the cult classic Barbarella. Readers will find themselves fully immersed in this thoughtful page turner. –DM Katie Collom, Peter Miles Has to Die (Del Rey) Three friends vow to kill the man responsible for their best friend’s death in this dark, feminist noir. I’m not too far into it yet, but the set up alone makes this one worth a read. And it’s part of a whole trend of women working together to commit murder. I love to see cooperation in a thriller! –MO Laura Shepherd-Robinson, The Art of a Lie (Atria) This book has a notably perfect ending. In Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s new historical mystery, a con artist targets the newly wealthy widow of a pastry shop owner in a Lonely Hearts scheme, not knowing that his mark is responsible for her husband’s untimely demise. A flirtatious cat-and-mouse game ensues, with heart-rending results. –MO Victor Suthammanont, Hollow Spaces (Counterpoint) It’s an excellent year for legal thrillers, but Hollow Spaces is something else: a psychological thriller about lawyers, in which the adult children of an acquitted murderer are spurred to reinvestigate the case that once tore their family apart. Interspersed are moments from 30 years before, told from their father’s perspective, as he navigates the tightrope of working as the only Asian-American partner in a high-powered corporate firm, while having a passionate affair with the soon-to-be murder victim. A delicate and devastating portrait of the limits of the American dream, deeply resonant in today’s landscape. –MO Christina Dotson, Love You To Death (Ballantine) Two childhood friends go on the run after a heist at a wedding goes south (to be fair, the wedding was at a plantation, so the newly married couple deserved all their cash stolen). Trials and tribulations ensue! And while it’s got Thelma and Louise vibes, don’t let that make you think you can predict the ending. This book will have you seriously questioning what you’d be willing to do for your best friend… –MO Isabel Cañas, The Possession of Alba Díaz (Berkley) In mid-18th century New Spain, a plague in Zacatecas sends a young woman and her family to her fiancés remote silver mine, where an ancient evil awaits. Isabel Canas has quickly become a superstar of historical fiction, and this one looks like the best yet! –MO Ania Ahlborn, The Unseen (Gallery) This book is scary af. A family in Colorado takes in a feral child, only to immediately experience a variety of strange and violent happenings. Is their new family member at fault? Or is there something worse hiding in the woods around them? Ahlborn’s take on the classic changeling narrative should have readers talking for years to come. –MO Lindsay King-Miller, This Is My Body (Quirk) It’s a banner year for religious-inspired horror, running the gamut from campy and satirical to truly terrifying, and I’m particularly excited for all the queer entries into this rarified category. In This Is My Body, a queer woman who fled her evangelical family after a horrifying childhood, only to return to the fold for an exorcism when her teenage daughter starts showing signs of demonic possession. Feminist horror, body horror, religious horror —this one has it all. –MO Hailey Piper, A Game in Yellow (Saga) The King In Yellow is the seed of inspiration for Hailey Piper’s batshit erotic horror thriller, in which a lesbian couple looking to spice things up goes down a hellish rabbit-hole when they discover a disturbing masterpiece that gives dark pleasures in small doses, and delivers death to those who ask for a bigger slice. –MO ___________________________________ SEPTEMBER AND BEYOND ___________________________________ L.S. Stratton, In Deadly Company (Union Square) L.S. Stratton has crafted some of the best, and most serious, thrillers of recent years, and I’m delighted to see her writing take a turn towards something a bit more fun—Stratton truly can do it all, when it comes mysteries! The satirical In Deadly Company follows a put-upon executive assistant tasked with planning a birthday extravaganza for her ne’er-do-well boss, who’s recently been put in charge of the family company after his mother’s shocking death in a car accident. After the party ends in a massacre, Stratton’s quick-witted protagonist is heralded as an innocent survivor, but as she relates her story to the actress playing her in a biopic, her heroism starts to look far more ambiguous. –MO Hank Phillippi Ryan, All This Could Be Yours (Minotaur) A debut author with a breakout novel is at the center of Hank Phillippi Ryan’s new spine-tingling thriller. Out on tour celebrating her big success, new author Tessa Calloway realizes she’s being stalked, and that she may be forced to reckon with some dark secrets from her past. All This Could Be Yours is a supremely accomplished book from a master of suspense. –DM William Kent Krueger, Apostle’s Cove (Atria) In the new Cork O’Connor novel, Cork is informed by his son that back in his days as a new sheriff, he helped put away an innocent Ojibwe man. Cork returns to the case to try to sort out guilt and innocence and how it all got so confused. Krueger is, as ever, a skilled and moving storyteller. –DM Lacy N. Dunham, The Belles (Atria) Dunham explores the stifling world of mid-century women’s colleges in this folk-horror-infused take on dark academia. In The Belles, a close-knit group of friends engage in secretive, wicked, and eventually deadly games in violation of the rules of their carefully controlled campus. Flash-forward sequences take us to their 50 year reunion, a gathering that may finally play host to the long-concealed truths of both characters and setting. –MO Kit Burgoyne, The Captive (Hell’s Hundred) Rosemary’s Baby, but make it Patty Hearst! In The Captive, a group of ecoterrorists kidnaps the heiress to a family fortune built on the violent exploitation of labor and the land, only to find out that their victim is pregnant with the devil’s baby, and has no intention of returning to her family. Come for the set-up, stay for the garden party. You’ll know it when you see it. –MO Eli Cranor, Mississippi Blue 42 (Soho) Cranor’s new novel channels Elmore Leonard through the world of dark money college football, as a newly minted FBI agent is assigned to track down a shadowy cabal in central Mississippi pouring dirty money into a football-obsessed community. Cranor’s prose has never been sharper and he knows this world inside and out. This is quite likely the most fun you’ll have with a crime book all year. –DM Alexandra Bell, The White Octopus Hotel (Del Rey) I may have cried while reading this in public. But that’s just proof of how good it is! In The White Octopus Hotel, an art appraiser finds her way to a mysterious and magical hotel in the Swiss Alps, traveling through time to arrive at the luxurious building in its 1930s heyday, where she forms an intense connection to a shell-shocked composer. The two lovers seek to learn the building’s secrets and avert the terrible events of the future, but the hotel’s magic is capricious, unpredictable, and possessed of its own inscrutable agenda. –MO Walter Mosley, Gray Dawn (Mulholland) For crime readers, a new Easy Rawlins novel is one of the big events of late summer / early fall. In the new installment, Easy is at the head of his own detective agency and thriving in 1970s LA. Mosley has more than earned his reputation as the ultimate craftsman – his language is precise, evocative, and poetic, and his stories challenge and satisfy in equal measure. –DM View the full article

We think we know the people around us, but what if we are wrong? What if we have fundamentally misunderstood who they are and how they see us—or, even worse, what if we have actively been deceived? It’s a destabilizing thought, and so it’s no wonder that these questions pulse beneath the surface of so many thrillers. The suspense genre is full of imposters, doppelgängers, and people who aren’t quite what they seem, forcing us to confront this fear head-on. My newest book, The Ascent, features a woman who is trying to keep the fact that she was raised in a cult a secret from her husband and everyone else around her. That secret is threatened when a woman shows up at her front door claiming to be someone from her past. She must figure out what this woman really wants, and if she can trust her. Writing these characters led me to reflect on the different ways suspense novels play with identity, raising questions about how far belief can be stretched, the nature of perception, and the types of deception we are capable of. Below are seven books that play with identity in a variety of fun ways and feature some of the different types of imposters that appear in thrillers. First Lie Wins (Ashley Elston): The Con Artist. The con artist is a classic imposter and used to great effect in Ashley Elston’s First Lie Wins. We are introduced to Evie Porter—not, of course, her real name. She works for the mysterious Mr. Smith and has just moved into a beautiful house with her doting boyfriend (and current mark). But Evie’s world is turned upside-down when someone shows up claiming to be her—using her real name and details about her real life. The con artist pulls us into a world where identities are fluid, no one can be trusted, and double-crossing is to be expected. Trust Issues (Elizabeth McCullough Keenan and Greg Wands): The Black Widower. One specific—and deeply troubling—type of con artist is the black widow or widower. In Elizabeth McCullough Kennan and Greg Wand’s Trust Issues, influencer Hazel and food photographer/party boy drug dealer Kagan Bailey were both counting on a sizable inheritance when their mother died. They’re shocked to learn that she left them nothing but money for rehab, and the siblings begin to question whether their mother’s new husband is as harmless as he seems. The black widower often takes advantage of preexisting tensions in the family—and dysfunctional family dynamics abound here, with Succession-like tension between the siblings. All Her Little Secrets (Wanda M. Morris): The Woman with a Secret. Another staple in suspense fiction is the woman with a secret past. Often the protagonist, this character has created a new life for herself and must decide how far she’ll go to protect it. In Wanda M. Morris’s All Her Little Secrets, Ellice Littlejohn has risen to success in the Atlanta legal scene, and the life she’s built would be threatened if people learned the truth about her childhood or her affair with her married boss. But her boss’s death—and Ellice’s discovery of his body—throws everything into turmoil. Morris has us cheering for the impostor, hoping she can figure out how to reconcile the fractured pieces of her history. The Plot (Jean Hanff Korelitz): The Fraud. The fraud holds himself out as having talents or abilities that he does not really possess, and in the case of Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot, it’s the ability to come up with a massive bestselling novel. Jacob Finch Bonner is a disgruntled creative writing teacher who has not come up with any good ideas of his own in a very long time. When he learns one of his former students has died, he steals the student’s brilliant—and unpublished—book idea, passing it off as his own. The book skyrockets him to fame and success, but there’s a price to be paid for his deception. The fraud is often not that sympathetic, even when he’s our protagonist—and instead of hoping for reconciliation, we want this character to get what’s coming to him. The Disappearing Act (Catherine Steadman): The Changeling. One of the eeriest types of imposters is the changeling. Someone disappears and someone else reappears in their place, and only our protagonist realizes something is amiss. In Catherine Steadman’s The Disappearing Act, actress Mia Eliot has come to LA for pilot season, and she is troubled when her new friend, Emily, goes missing from an audition. Even more disturbing, however, is when “Emily” comes back but is obviously a different person. This type of imposter story is fertile ground for self-doubt and gaslighting, and often raises the question of which voices we take seriously. The Likeness (Tana French): The Doppelgänger. Tana French’s The Likeness features another unsettling device in suspense fiction, the doppelgänger. Detective Cassie Maddox arrives at a crime scene to find a victim who looks exactly like her. She uses the resemblance to her advantage and goes undercover as the victim, moving into the beautiful manor house the victim shared with four other students and inserting herself into the uncomfortably close-knit group. In stories where the protagonist is the look-alike imposter, the question of whether she is actually fooling anyone looms large. Who is really deceived, and who is only pretending, hiding secrets of their own? The Talented Mr. Ripley (Patricia Highsmith): The Shapeshifter. The shapeshifter does not simply take on a false identity, but is specifically trying to become his or her mark, and no list of imposter books would be complete without Patricia Highsmith’s classic, The Talented Mr. Ripley. Tom Ripley slowly works his way into the life of Dickie Greenleaf, a wealthy acquaintance who is hiding from his responsibilities on the Italian coast. Ripley is a shapeshifting psychopath, and the book is an unnerving look into his psyche. *** View the full article

A few years back I wrote a novel about a serial killer who had a new and interesting way of dispatching his victims. He sabotaged elevators and sent people plunging to their deaths. Many readers told me that after they read that book, they started taking the stairs instead of the elevator whenever they could. I’d freaked them out. They could never look at an elevator the same way again. This is when you feel, as an author, that you’ve really done your job. Making people fear things in their everyday lives in ways they never did before, that’s the dream of every writer of suspenseful tales. If you’ve seen Steven Spielberg’s Duel, you know the chill that comes from looking in your rear view and seeing it filled with the front grill of a tractor trailer. Look what Stephen King has done for clowns or wide-eyed mechanical monkeys with drums. Jaws made us afraid of the beach. Is there anything scarier than a simple door at the end of a long hallway when you don’t know what’s on the other side of it? The writers of Severance know the answer to that one. And what about dolls? Chucky, Annabelle, the ventriloquist’s dummy from William Goldman’s Magic, or more recently, M3gan? Dolls have a special place in the annals of horror and suspense. I call still remember the night, as a kid, watching Trilogy of Terror, an ABC movie of the week featuring Karen Black being terrorized by a Zuni fetish doll. That one still gives me chills. Toys – like that mechanical monkey and those devilish dolls – work well when it comes to embodying evil. Turning their innocence on their head is what makes them so frightening, and it helps that they share some of our characteristics. They have faces. They have penetrating eyes, mouths that smile. They can be – deep breath here – anthropomorphized. So they have an edge. But what about a toy that doesn’t have face-like features? What about, say, a toy train? Okay, some trains have faces. That little engine that could. Thomas the Tank Engine and all his friends. But those are friendly faces. Benevolent. Thomas never scared anyone. But is it possible to make a toy train evil? Can a seemingly innocent train set – some old Lionel or American Flyer trains tucked away in a box that typically come out at Christmas to be set up around the tree – be imbued with the power to create mayhem? To scare some poor family to, well, death? That’s what I’ve set out to do in my new novel, Whistle. If I’ve done my job right, you’ll never look at a toy train the same way again. Woo woo. *** View the full article

1. Act of Story Statement A journalist obsessed with observing others’ struggles publicly grapples with a shocking secret that upends his identity and family relationships. 2. Antagonist (200 words or less) Dr. Lane Huff (60s), Jules’s biological mother, is an MIT philosophy professor and celebrated public intellectual who writes about the need for “autonomy of mind”. She thinks that depression caused by societal authoritarianism can be treated by committing what she calls “non-interpersonal law-skirting acts” (including use of supplements, placing banned kids books in public spaces). She has turned her (not very effective/groundbreaking) performative demonstrations into MacArthur Genius winning academic treatises against the “prison-industrial- American-Puritan-complex”. She cultivates a dynamic, charismatic public persona that is communal/maternal, open-minded, and erudite while privately, she spends her days shutting down critics/other female academics and curating an exclusionary, tightknit group of socially connected “friends”, hired staff, and heavyweight legal/financial advisors. She has no interest in learning about or having a relationship with the biological children her donated eggs created. 3. List three title options a. Conditions for Affinity (current working title) b. Island of Incompetence c. Filial Imitatio 4. Comps Main Comp: American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis -I hope to offer a more hopeful, introspective take on a similarly acerbic twist/skewering of a familiar 30-something yuppie breakdown narrative. -Patrick Bateman, to me, is a quintessential anti-hero (hero being a charitable misnomer) who nonetheless captivates and transcends his novel thanks to his iconoclastic, identifiable pov on everything from his wardrobe choices to the morality of murder. My novel is also centered around a divisive, antiheroic personality (who, while not a serial killer, doesn’t necessarily elicit sympathy). Jules is reactionary, opinionated, and overtly solipsistic in his narration when dissecting nuances of social interaction and relationships. I want him to veer into polarizing territory that elicits a spectrum of emotions in readers, from secondhand discomfort to contempt to appealing relatability. Comp: Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerny Comp: Night Film by Marisha Pessl 5. Core Wound and Primary Conflict When an emotionally-stunted foreign correspondent is tasked with drawing new readers to his highbrow periodical, he reluctantly pens an intimate, personal op-ed detailing how he accidentally discovered his biological mother and, against her wishes, connected with his three siblings scattered across ideological and state lines. 6. What is the protagonist’s inner/secondary conflict a. Inner conflict Jules’s primary struggle stems from his inability to self-validate and his lack of firm grasp on his inherent worth (irrespective of his strengths and flaws). He can’t seem to reconcile his competing paradoxical mental states that leave him constantly self-flagellating. On the one hand, he displays an outer persona that is self-abnegating and insecure regarding his estimations of his success/intellect relative to his peers while on the other hand, he’s privately extremely opinionated/critical, self-assured, and confident in his moral convictions. He constantly seeks out life-threatening external escapades that ideally would allow him to divert his attention to other’s needs/struggles (i.e. the war between Russia and Ukraine). However, he still goes about his physically/emotionally intensive fieldwork while existing almost exclusively inside his own head. He’s more focused on interpreting and making peace with his own interpretations/reactions to witnessing tragedy than he is on engaging with the world around him. Hypothetical scenario: Jules watches an intensive military campaign but can’t stop obsessing over the cognitive dissonance that he experiences when he realizes that a) he’s not in danger and b) the natural landscape is visually arresting. He’s a self-described “consumer” of tragic scenes that play in his field of vision like movie vignettes. b. Secondary Conflict Jules finds himself facing an identity crisis as he routinely fails to find common ground or acceptance within the social group that he once considered his “crowd” (or family). A major recurring secondary conflict arises as Jules grows less and less willing to quietly overlook certain moral and ideological failures among his peers. Jules passionately values writing about humanitarian crisis and using his platform for activism; writing is his means of connecting to the wider world and fulfilling himself. He fears losing his well-intended, idealist streak as he notices that the people he once tolerated (as acquaintances, colleagues, family members etc.) in a somewhat transactional sense a) do not share his values, b) are solely focused on their own social status, virtue signaling, power, and base personal needs, and c) cannot provide him with a gratifying source of friendship, family, or social interaction. Hypothetical scenario: He runs into his former college roommate, Frankie, who at first appears to be a superficially successful/inspiring neurosurgeon. Frankie and his wife Cheryl initially leverage their “expertise” (i.e. education) and faux-generosity to manipulate Jules into beta testing their products. Jules later learns that Frankie is facing lawsuits related to illegal patient data distribution, has filed for bankruptcy, and-from prison- is helping market Cheryl’s untested, unregulated stem-cell collection startup. 7. Setting (s) I think of my project as a fish out of water story. Jules is a largely a product of his environment on the east coast. He’s from upper middle-class NJ, went to a fussy Connecticut boarding school and Princeton (undergrad, PHD), and lived briefly off-Broadway. His perspective is generally rooted in the social mores of the NJ-NYC-east coast region. In the novel’s opening, he relocates from his beloved temp studio in Georgetown, D.C. back to an apartment in Jersey City but he immediately stops in the Upper West Side, NYC where his periodical’s managing editor lives. Jules’s first step (after discovering his family secret) is to meet his biological mother, Lane, who owns a penthouse (a kind of modern intellectual salon) on exclusive, tawny Newbury Street in Boston. Jules is initially taken in by her seemingly charmed New England world full of liberal intellectuals, famous artists/politicians, and NYC defectors. However, he quickly realizes that Lane’s carefully engineered community is even more perniciously vacuous and power-hungry (i.e. Harvard scientists fudging results, rising political stars taking bribes/paid sponsorships) than the hypercompetitive NYC crowd. *A recurring image of various cities (i.e. NYC, Boston) as a postmodern, overly consumerist, insecurity-inducing hellscapes (where survival of the coolest/most ambitious is the prevailing ethos) is a backdrop against which I want to develop a sense of tension in Jules. After being rejected by Lane, Jules travels cross country to connect with his scattered half-siblings by living with their families for a week. Each family (plus their wider neighborhood) that Jules attempts to join offers a visual/cultural contrast that pushes Jules to question the blind spots his background/upbringing instilled in him. The following are the hometowns of his three half-siblings: a. Freehold, NJ…a middle-class slightly conservative south Jersey suburb (think clapboard homes, stone churches, a colonial “historic” feel, somewhat cliquish community of multigenerational families). Its famous attraction, the horse raceway track, recently closed due to financial competition from sports-betting/casinos leaving behind grim economic repercussions that are especially noticeable in the town’s shrinking shopping district (comprised of small business, mom and pop shops). b. Arlington, VA…an “almost but not quite D.C.” city that’s just a hair away from being southern-lite. My novel focuses mainly on the new tech/defense/government contracting professional community. c. Santa Monica, CA…an uber wealthy community near Hollywood with a Stepford meets Real Housewives undercurrent. Everyone’s a public Democrat and secret Libertarian who may or may not be interested in vaccines for their dogs, works in “the industry” (entertainment), has their plastic surgeon for an emergency contact, and wears overpriced workout gear to shop at exclusive supermarkets (whether they’ve filed for Chapter VII or not).

Welcome to “Scene of the Crime,” a recurring column in which we examine single memorable scenes from crime movies. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, directed by Tommy Lee Jones in 2006, makes its boarder patrol villain Mike Norton (Barry Pepper) suffer for the myriad crimes he has perpetrated against Mexican immigrants. Specifically, Texas rancher Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones) is avenging the murder of his dear friend Melquiades “Mel” Estrada (Julio César Cedillo) by transporting both Mel’s dead body and a tied-up Norton to the Texas-Mexico boarder, to bury him properly in his homeland and to make Norton do it. There’s a point in the film where the men need to cross a river. Perkins, on horseback, has been dragging Norton behind him. They reach a river, and Perkins will ride across it, while Norton will walk. Norton, who has tried to run away twice (the second time resulting in a snakebite for which he needs medical treatment from a healer in Mexico), refuses to cross the river, digging his heels (literally), and loudly protesting. So, Perkins lassos him, dragging him, thrashing and howling, through the water to the other side. The significance of this scene in the film cannot be overstated; the process of taking Norton to the Texas-Mexico border is one which slowly dehumanizes, even animalizes, him as retribution for the constant dehumanization and animalization he perpetrates against the Mexican immigrants who endanger their own lives to cross the border. Norton is skinny—gaunt, with sunken eyes, reptilian posture, and protruding bones. He’s wearing a tan shirt with a snakeskin-style pattern on it. As they approach the border, and as the protagonist gets closer to their goals, however, the wildness of the villain’s physical appearance, and his feral, uncivilized tendencies, become more pronounced, until he is forced to physically represent how he behaves socially—becoming the animals they initially resembled. It’s no coincidence that Norton is bit by a snake; by the time he crosses the river, he has reptile in him, literal cold blood inside his metaphorical cold blood. He becomes, in every possible way without a full mystical transformation, the snake he has always been. In fact, earlier, while lying down, unconscious after the rattlesnake bite, a band of Latino travelers who have just made it across the border stumble upon Norton’s body and the snake. “Watch out, there’s a rattlesnake,” they call, but the snake, dead on the ground, is not visible—only Norton’s body, hanging out of a hole in the rock, is, and it seems as if the call is referring to him and not the animal. The venomous Norton habitually fights dirty—early on in the film, while catching a Mexican couple who had crossed the boarder, he tackles them couple (screaming “bitch,” to the woman, punching her in the nose) until they are defenseless. Later on, he encounters the woman again—in Mexico. She is the healer treating his snakebite, and, in a moment of reflexivity, she tells the guide that she recognizes him as her assailant because “he has a face like a white rat”—before she punches him in the nose as payback. In flattening his nose, she further removes his more mammalian appearance in exchange for something suitably reptilian. Later, in the river-crossing scene, bites the guide to protest riding through the river, not unlike the snake that had bitten him. Here, he is lassoed like stubborn cow, and dragged as if on a leash through the water by the mounted Perkins. Following them is the guide, also on horseback, who is dragging a donkey from a similar rope—and this visual proportion turns Mike into, well, an ass. But his thrashing movements (achieved through Pepper’s remarkable physical acting) are elastic and wriggling, snakelike in every way. In the film’s final sequence, after the healer he had injured truly saves his life by drawing out the venom and traces of animal he had inside him, they arrive at Mel’s true burial ground. Perkins demands that Norton ask for forgiveness—and Norton, crying and begging, complies. Here, in Mexico, he is able to turn back into a human, leaving behind the beast he was in Texas. View the full article