September Mourn by Jess Lourey

First published as September Fair in 2009; reissued by Thomas & Mercer on August 27, 2024

September Mourn is a novel of the northern Midwest. The pace is easy. Characters are at least superficially and often genuinely friendly. Cows are abundant.

September Mourn is the fifth entry in a series that stars Mira James. Mira is a librarian and part-time reporter for a small-town newspaper in Battle Lake, Minnesota. She regularly stumbles upon murder victims, a habit she would like to break. I confess that I haven’t read the first four “Murder by Month” mysteries — the series was first published by a Minnesota publisher that subsequently closed its crime fiction imprint — but I don’t think that impaired my ability to understand or enjoy this one.

The story takes place at the Minnesota State Fair. Ashley Pederson is awaiting coronation as the new Milkfed Mary (a/k/a Queen of the Dairy) while a sculptor carves her likeness from a large block of butter. The lights go out. When they come back on, Ashley is dead. Her skin has turned “the brightest red” Mira has ever seen. There’s a clue in the skin color, yes?

Mira takes a picture of Ashley just before the lights go out, but someone steals her camera before she can study it. As a reporter whose story will be better if she can solve the crime, Mira dutifully interviews people who might offer insight into the murder. She discovers that locks of hair have been cut from the heads of several Milkfed Mary contestants. Another clue? She uncovers scandals and crimes, some related to the murder and others not, as she assembles a bucket full of clues that will help her find the killer.

Ashley was a Mean Girl, so the list of murder suspects is lengthy. Is the killer a competitor for the crown? Could it be the chaperone, the pageant sponsor, or the state fair’s corporate president? Might it be the eco-terrorist Aeon Hopkins or a Milkfed Mary from the past? The lengthy list of potential suspects should engage the attention of murder mystery fans.

September Mourn has the light tone of cozy mystery with a dash of romcom. Violence is restrained and not particularly graphic. Mira doesn’t try to be an action hero, although she does defend herself when necessary. Mira is attracted to Johnny Leeson (the Adonis of Battle Lake) but she doesn’t jump into bed with him. For Mira, sex is a matter of desire rather than action. She shares thoughts with the reader that are slightly saucy (“I wanted to kiss so long that our lips pruned”), but cozy mystery fans can probably read the story without blushing. The few ribald comments in the novel are made by a senior citizen.

The senior who contributes lusty thoughts to the story is Mrs. Berns. Some of those thoughts are inspired by Neil Diamond, who is performing at the fair. Mrs. Berns’ friend Kennie Rogers is the mayor of the small town in which Mira lives. They provide comic relief in a novel that never takes itself too seriously.

Jess Lourey’s prose is consistently witty. The mystery’s resolution is satisfying. The characters are enjoyable. Atmosphere is spot on. I was pleasantly surprised by September Mourn and look forward to dipping into other entries in the reissued series.

RECOMMENDED

The House Hunt by C.M. Ewan

Published by Grand Central Publishing on August 27, 2024

Lucy is claustrophobic. She also lives with a constant fear of being attacked. Her husband, Sam, is a psychology professor who runs support groups to meet his university’s community involvement guideline. Sam hasn’t managed to cure Lucy of her phobias, although one of his support groups is devoted to people with debilitating fears.

Sam inherited a house that he and Lucy can’t afford. They went into debt to fix it up before putting it on the market. A potential buyer named Donovan arrives to look at the house, but the estate agent is running late. Sam is working and Donovan has another appointment later so Lucy sets aside her fear and agrees to show him the house. Since this is a thriller, you know that Lucy made a brave but bad decision.

Intercut with scenes that set up events inside the house are scenes of Sam running his support group. A couple of its members seem unbalanced, particularly one who fears that he won’t be able to control his homicidal impulses. Will Sam be harmed?

The separate Lucy and Sam storylines eventually intersect, leading to multiple nongraphic scenes of violence. Characters find themselves under attack for reasons that most of them can’t comprehend. The reader is challenged to decide which characters are innocent and which are villainous. The reader will suspect nearly every character of living a hidden life.

Speed, intensity, and cinematic action are the novel’s strengths. C.M. Ewan accomplishes this by using the traditional tricks of the thriller writer’s trade:  short chapters (116 of them) populated by short (often single-sentence) paragraphs. He invites the reader to experience the novel as a movie by making frequent cuts between the main action and distant action. Ewan needn’t have used techniques that create the illusion of a page-turner; he speeds the story along by keeping it in motion at all times. He judiciously mixes in distractions — unexplained thumps, a character’s failure to respond after venturing into the basement — to ratchet up the suspense. His use of the genre’s writing techniques is masterful, even if they make the book seem a bit formulaic.

When it seems that the plot has been resolved, Ewan wheels in a new ending. He does this multiple times before the story finally runs out of gas. It’s fun to be surprised but when surprise follows surprise follows surprise, I feel like I’m being played. Given that the plot as a whole is unrealistic, I don’t suppose an unrealistic series of surprises at the end can do any harm.

It’s difficult to say whether Lucy is a likable character. She’s so frenzied that the reader gets little chance to know her. Lucy is the kind of protagonist who places herself in a dangerous position rather than waiting for the police to arrive, as if she knows that the story will be better if she does one more brave deed. Characters making stupid decisions is the foundation for every slasher movie, but I always hope that thriller writers will invest their characters with a bit of common sense.

My most significant complaint about The House Hunt does not relate to how the story is told, but whether the story makes sense. To avoid spoiling it, I won’t discuss why characters behave as they do. I will say that the topics of altered or lost memories and brainwashing make their way into the plot. As is often true in thrillers, Ewan’s vague explanations of how those concepts drive a character are unconvincing.

The obligatory upbeat ending will please many readers. Setting aside a plot that a less charitable reviewer might describe as preposterous, The House Hunt merits a firm recommendation for accomplishing the ultimate goal of thrillers: creating suspense, a puzzling mystery, and exciting moments. I set aside my concerns about the plot for the sake of enjoying a book that, despite its flaws, tells an engaging story.

RECOMMENDED

Highway Thirteen by Fiona McFarlane

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on August 13, 2024

The stories in Highway Thirteen are linked by Paul Biga, a (fictional) serial killer who abducted and kidnapped a dozen girls he found walking on an Australian highway between 1990 and 1997. The stories take place at different times over the last fifty years, apart from one set in 1950 and another in 2028. Taken together, they examine the impact that a single criminal had on multiple lives across time and continents.

I was impressed by nine of the twelve stories, a higher average than is typical for a short story collection. A couple of stories are about secret thoughts. In “Tourists,” a walk in a forest where a serial killer buried his victims might spark an office romance — or a rejection. During the walk, the woman senses evil, while the man envisions himself killing his walking companion.

Also based on hidden thoughts, “Hunter on the Highway” (my favorite story in the book) takes place after a female hitchhiker is attacked. The victim’s description of her attacker matches May’s boyfriend. He’s an uncomplicated, likable bar band musician but does she really know him? Will she talk herself into believing that he’s a killer and calling a hotline to report her suspicion? The story has something important to say about how media hype associated with crime pollutes the heads of people who begin to see criminals everywhere.

“Demolition” builds on familiar news interviews of neighbors who say that the serial killer next door kept to himself and was “just a little off.” Paul Biga lived across the street from Eva. When he was a child, he helped her with gardening. As a retired teacher who taught Biga, she knows that all adolescents are strange and bewildered. Paul did not seem unusually strange, although she didn’t tell the journalist who interviewed her (for the second time, on the occasion of Biga’s home’s demolition) about the disturbing letter he wrote her.

A couple of other stories are also based on memories. The Englishman in “Abroad” attempts to cope with Halloween in America, a celebration of the supernatural that forces him to acknowledge memories of his sister’s unexplained disappearance in Australia when he was a child and how it changed his father’s life. In “Hostess,” a retired flight attendant reflects with melancholy upon the time he shared a home, and sometimes a bed, with another retired flight attendant and her faithful dog. The connection to Biga comes from the female flight attendant’s attempt to persuade her sister to end her engagement to an older man who (in the flight attendant’s opinion) is creepy.

“Fat Suit” is about an Australian actor whose Hollywood marriage is breaking up just as he begins filming a movie in which he plays the famous serial killer (he got fat after years in jail). The story illustrates how one thought sparks another as the actor contemplates his father’s death, his failed marriage, his relationship with his stepchildren, and whales.

While a majority of the stories are serious, some are infused with dark humor. The narrator of “Hostel” tells the story of Mandy and Roy, who like to tell the story of the Swiss backpacker they found weeping outside a hostel — a girl who later was murdered. The narrator imagines herself in the Swiss girl’s position as she entertains fantasies about Roy. “Hostel” uses humor to capture the truth of its characters: “It’s not that Mandy was vain; she just liked to be good at everything she did. So she liked to be good at having a body.”

Fiona McFarlane’s humor is fully displayed in “Democracy Sausage.” A political candidate named Biga isn’t sure whether he is related to the infamous serial killer, but he questions whether voters will disassociate him from his “blackened” name. While Biga is hosting a backyard barbeque, a dog “came springing out from the underbrush of a local riverside path with, between his teeth, a large rubber dildo, the colour of fair flesh but streaked with silty mud, resembling nothing so much as a poorly barbequed sausage.”

Set in 2028, “Podcast” is written in the form of a transcript of a very funny true crime podcast. A recently discovered body that might be linked to Biga (now eight years dead) is the podcast’s subject, although the discussion is quickly diverted to a gossipy account of a podcaster’s gay marriage (his husband doesn’t understand the true crime obsession) and speculation about life in Australia, a country the podcasters have never visited. The podcast tangentially addresses the concept of murder as entertainment, which is an apt description of true crime books, movies, TV shows, and podcasts.

The way in which McFarlane links such diverse stories is dazzling. Biga is in the background of each story, sometimes so tangentially that it takes a bit of effort to understand how he relates to the story’s characters, yet the stories shy away from the gruesome details of murder. They touch instead on the lives of people who feel the impact of Biga’s crimes, sometimes without even knowing that a crime occurred. Many of the individual stories are memorable. Collectively, they gain additional power. Highway Thirteen might be a good choice for a crime fiction book club in search of an offbeat offering that moves beyond the genre's cliches.

RECOMMENDED

Spirit Crossing by William Kent Krueger

Published by Atria Books on August 20, 2024

Spirit Crossing is the latest entry in William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor series. Cork is a former county sheriff. Now he lends an unofficial hand to friends who work for local police agencies, including tribal officer Daniel English. In Spirit Crossing, Cork shares the spotlight with English and several other characters, including Waaboo, who Daniel's wife found under a rock.

Waaboo sees dead people. We know from earlier novels that some Native characters have visions and can chat with spirits. Waaboo sees a young woman standing in a blueberry patch where her body is buried. It could be the body of Olivia Hamilton or Crystal Two Knives, two women who have recently gone missing. State authorities have been steering the tribal police away from Olivia’s case because her parents have influence and higher authorities need to coddle them.

After Daniel digs up the body, he realizes the victim was a Native. Since Olivia is white, outside law enforcement agencies quickly lose interest. Daniel doesn’t know whether the body is Crystal’s, but he hopes that investigating Crystal’s disappearance might shed light on Olivia’s fate.

Cork and Daniel (sometimes with Waaboo’s help over his protective mother’s objections) join with local cops to solve the mystery. The characters often discuss the reality that a missing white girl leads to obsessive reporting while the media ignore missing Native girls. Krueger tried to make a good point, but he couldn't resist the urge to add human trafficking to the story. Little originality is on display in Spirit Crossing.

Mild action scenes (meaning that characters actually move around) arrive at expected intervals, but this isn’t a pulse-pounding thriller. A bad guy occasionally takes a shot at groups of good guys but never manages to hit one, despite using a deer rifle. It’s hard to believe that Minnesota deer hunters would be such poor shots.

Series fans might appreciate the wrinkle thrown into the characters’ lives when they learn that Cork’s daughter Annie has an inoperable brain tumor. Only Maria, Annie’s lover from Guatemala, knows about Annie’s health condition. If this sounds to you like Telemundo content, I had that same thought.

The characters have folksy, familial, serious conversations about each other’s lives. The accumulated dialog seems like little more than a modernized version of soap opera gossip. Redundant discussions about health and family issues slow the pace of a novel that it is no hurry to reach a destination.

Several asides in the narrative address the fear and anger that accompany an anticipated death, culminating in Henry Meloux’s advice about returning to the Creator with an open heart. Henry, the wise old Native who offers spiritual guidance to anyone who listens, is a stereotype. Unfortunately, redundant conversations about “crossing over” and “walking the path of souls” contribute to the story’s languid pace.

At times, Spirit Crossing reads like Christian lit with Native American religions substituting for Christianity. The characters spend a good bit of time discussing “the Great Mystery” and God and their anger at God and their strained belief in a deity’s existence. Waaboo seems to be plugged into the spirit world and is positioned to reassure everyone that there really is an afterlife, an assurance that comforts the characters and might do the same for some readers.

The characters also spend a good amount of time preaching the value of forgiveness and of understanding the forces that shape people who perform evil acts. I am in favor of forgiveness and understanding but the characters’ repeated discussions of spiritual values impede a story that already proceeds at a slow pace.

The plot is straightforward but less than scintillating. The notion that a bad guy would want to kill Waaboo to stop him from gathering more evidence from dead people seems farfetched to me, but these criminals aren’t the brightest villains. The crime solvers interview people to gather information, but they rely more on Waaboo’s connection with the spirit world than on deduction. This isn’t the kind of mystery that will impress Sherlock Holmes fans, but it might engage series fans.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Spy Who Vanished by Alma Katsu

Published by Amazon Original Stories on July 18, 2024

The Spy Who Vanished is the name given to its three parts collectively. Each part is available individually from Amazon as part of its Original Stories series. The cover shown above belongs to the first story. Kindle users who don’t belong to Kindle Unlimited must purchase and download all three if they want to have a meaningful reading experience, as none of the three parts stand alone. Together they are a novella (and also a marketing tool for Kindle Unlimited).

Yuri Kozlov is a Russian agent. Putin assigned him to pose as a defector to gain access to the CIA. He’s supposed to report everything he learns to the Kremlin if he manages to worm secrets out of the agents who are subjecting him to a friendly interrogation. Putin is particularly eager to learn the identity of a CIA mole who is suspected of having infiltrated Russian intelligence. If not for the CIA’s track record of indiscretion, it would be difficult to swallow Yuri's almost immediate acquisition of that information,

In addition to gathering intelligence, Yuri is told to find and kill a Russian defector, Maxim Sokolov. Putin wants him eliminated because he knows something embarrassing about Putin that he apparently hasn’t revealed. There is hardly reason to fear that Sokolov will spill the beans after all these years, but Putin is paranoid. It seems unlikely that Yuri can accomplish all these tasks without being killed or captured, but Putin probably thinks that's Yuri's problem to worry about.

Yuri learns that Sokolov died in a car accident but that he married and had a daughter. Yuri’s handler conveys that intelligence, then tells Yuri that Putin wants the wife and daughter eliminated. Yuri comes to learn that Sokolov’s daughter is someone he has met, someone he likes.

Yuri is not nuanced. He doesn't do moral dilemmas. You point him at a target, he destroys it, that's his life. Yet he killed an innocent girl once and has been at least mildly haunted by it. He wonders how he will feel if he kills an innocent girl he knows. I give Alma Katsu credit for giving Yuri even this modest amount of depth.

Setting aside the improbable plot, the story works best as a psychological profile of a Russian agent who (1) feels disrespected by handlers who view him as an uneducated thug with a talent for assassination, and (2) kind of enjoys the benefits of western life, but (3) only feels at home in Russia and worries that he’ll always be looking over his shoulder for a Russian assassin if he actually defects and stays in the US. The story’s mild dramatic tension derives from that dilemma: should be stay (in the US as a defector) or should he go (back to Russia after succeeding or failing in his mission)?

While the story is nicely executed, it lacks substance and credibility. Alma Katsu’s character sketch of Yuri is convincing but the plot is not. Nor is the story sufficiently eventful or surprising to pay a strong reward to a reader who consumes all three parts. Maybe Katsu will eventually expand it into a more satisfying novel, although it’s difficult to see where else the story could go.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS