4 minute read
THE ECHOES by Jess Montgomery
the echoes
A FATAL OVERTURE
Kalb, Kathleen Marple Kensington (304 pp.) $26.00 | March 29, 2022 978-1-4967-2725-1
An Irish Jewish diva is more adept at solving crimes than ordering her own life. The year 1900 dawns with a surprise for trouser-role opera singer Ella Shane: a visit from the mother and aunts of her love, Gilbert Saint Aubyn, Duke of Leith. The aristocratic ladies have come to urge Shane to patch up her differences with Gil over her career through a marriage contract. Indeed, Ella is urged to marry Gil by many friends and relatives, including her cousin Tommy, a former champion boxer who shares a Greenwich Village house with her and manages the Ella Shane Opera Company. The visiting ladies move into Ella’s house after they discover a man stabbed to death in their hotel suite. Ella’s friend Hetty, a reporter, is working undercover at the hotel for a story she won’t discuss in detail. But she does reveal that the dead man, son of the owner, was known to prey on women. Shane and Gil agree to an informal engagement. Despite their passion for each other, though, they still can’t agree on how many tours Shane will be able to make. Gil has a bad feeling about his relatives and the dead man, and when Hetty claims to have killed him in self-defense, Ella resolves to discover the truth, unaware that she and Gil face danger from another source.
The historical detail and the heroine’s romance, brimming with tension, make up for the weak mystery.
THE KING FALLS
Lee, R.J. Kensington (304 pp.) $15.95 paper | March 29, 2022 978-1-4967-3149-4
The murder of a bridge-playing playboy roils a Mississippi town replete with secrets. Wendy Winchester Rierson’s marriage to Ross, her detective husband, has been marred only by her inability to conceive. The daughter of Police Chief Bax Winchester, Wendy has already proven her crime-solving chops by investigating several murders, an experience highly pertinent to her career as an investigative reporter. After she receives an invitation to one of the fabulous bridge parties hosted by King Kohl, scion of a wealthy local real estate family, who has a reputation as a lady’s man and a hard-charging salesman, she’s surprised to get a text canceling the party and inviting her to King’s house for an explanation. Arriving on schedule, she’s nearly run over by Marcus Silvertree, who’s phoning 911 after finding King’s body. Since Silvertree ran a rival real estate company the Kohls drove out of business, he’s a prime suspect. But Wendy thinks a woman may be involved in this apparent crime of passion. King had at least three more possible candidates in his life, two women he’d seriously dated and his part-time housekeeper, who had a major crush on him. King’s parents are devastated—especially his mother, whose dementia causes her to think she’s killed her son. Eventually Wendy uses both her experience and her intuition to reveal an unexpected killer.
Oodles of Southern charm and a well-concealed miscreant add up to an exciting page-turner.
THE ECHOES
Montgomery, Jess Minotaur (288 pp.) $27.99 | March 29, 2022 978-1-2506-2342-3
Yearning for the good old days? This cleareyed look at life in 1920s Appalachian Ohio may change your mind. Sheriff Lily Ross has suffered her share of hard times in her quest to solve crimes. Maybe her perfectionism is why her mother hesitated to tell her that Lily’s adored brother, who was killed in World War I, had a child, Esme, with a nowdeceased Frenchwoman. After years of secret communications between Lily’s mother and the French family, Esme’s on her way to live with them. Meanwhile, the largely poor rural area eagerly awaits the opening of an amusement park built by wealthy Chalmer Fitzpatrick, who served with Lily’s brother. In the background lurks a long-running feud over the land on which the park is built. A second-sighted woman’s prediction of a drowning in the park’s fishing pond comes disconcertingly true. Around the same time as the death, which is no accident, a baby is left on Chalmer’s porch. Lily’s friend and deputy, Marvena, recognizes the infant as one a poor local mother wetnursed in an attempt to put food on her own children’s table while her physically abusive husband is unemployed. Lily finally learns about Esme when the child does not arrive as arranged, presumably because she’s been kidnapped. While working the murder case and searching for Esme, Lily uncovers a lot of nasty secrets about people she thought she knew. Trying to accept a new picture of her brother while hunting a killer and kidnapper, she leans on the network of strong women she’s developed over the years.
