MURDER BY THE BOOK Ed. by Martin Edwards

Canadeo, Anne Kensington (320 pp.) $26.00 | Aug. 30, 2022 978-1-4967-3241-5

A bunch of sleuthing knitters in smalltown Massachusetts become involved in a murder case involving a friend. Though it’s not the first time a member of the Black Sheep has been accused of murder, heavily pregnant Lucy Binger finds this threat both a welcome distraction and a provocation to seek the truth. The group often meets at the Happy Hands Café, owned by Rebecca Hurley, the college friend Lucy has been getting reacquainted with years after they lost touch. Their two stepdaughters have already become fast friends. Rebecca’s husband, Colin, seems an odd duck, but it’s still a shock when he’s killed by a falling bookcase. The police seize on Rebecca as the likeliest suspect. Lucy, who’s a whiz at internet searches, soon turns up some disturbing information on Colin, who’d planned to skip out on Rebecca using money in a hidden bitcoin account. The thriller he was writing is both derivative and boring, but it provides some clues to his demise, beginning with the strong resemblance of the protagonist, a nerdy superhero, to Colin himself. Lucy’s determination to follow up these clues in person dismays her friends and especially her veterinarian husband, who worries about her health as they await the birth of their new baby. Her friends, fearing that Rebecca will be arrested if they don’t come up with some more plausible suspects, pitch in to help. In the end, it’s Lucy’s dog who helps solve the complex case.

Davis, Krista Berkley (288 pp.) $8.99 paper | Sept. 6, 2022 978-0-593-43695-0

The Wagtail, Virginia, Dog and Cat Gingerbread House Contest, with its $10,000 prize, is interrupted by news of murders old and new. When Orly Biffle died, he left the town land for a new conference center as long as a majestic old oak tree was preserved. Now that the tree has started shedding limbs, it’s become a safety hazard, and Liesel Miller, Holly Miller’s grandmother and partner in the Sugar Maple Inn, has determined in her capacity asWagtail mayor to challenge the will and have the tree cut down. The situation gets worse when the tree trunk turns out to be filled with concrete that chews up the chainsaw blades attacking it, and worse still when police Sgt. Dave Quinlan and Holly’s sweetie, architect Holmes Richardson, realize that concrete isn’t the only thing it’s filled with. The most likely donors of the remains immured inside the tree 20 years ago are lady’s man Boomer Jenkins, who disappeared just before his planned wedding; Penn Connor, a Sugar Maple guest who departed without checking out around the same time; and Jay Alcorn, whose mother, Althea, is now selling the family home long after she tried to talk him into dropping his unsuitable girlfriend Josie Biffle, Orly’s daughter. As if this weren’t excitement enough, 9-year-old Kitty Johnson disappears along with her grandmother, Jean Maybury, whose gingerbread house entry has won her a weeklong stay at the Sugar Maple. The winsome, forgettable mystery is interrupted periodically by advice from Trixie, Holly’s Jack Russell terrier, to her fellow canines who dream of turning detective, and it’s capped by nine recipes, three of them suitable for dogs (including one for cats).

MURDER BY THE BOOK Mysteries for Bibliophiles

Ed. by Edwards, Martin Poisoned Pen (304 pp.) $14.99 paper | Sept. 6, 2022 978-1-72826-115-7

Sixteen reprints from 1933 to 1973 showing golden age–inspired puzzle masters doing what they do best: bringing together readers, books, and felonies.

Even more than in other entries in the British Library Crime Classics, the hallmarks here are urbane literacy and unfettered conceptual invention. There’s a pleasing variety in the ways books make it into the stories. G.D.H. and M. Cole, Nicholas Blake, Gladys Mitchell, and Marjorie Bremner present writers who become victims of homicide; the writers in the stories by Philip MacDonald, Michael Innes, Victor Canning, and Edmund Crispin take on a more active role. Thirty-seven books go missing in S.C. Roberts’ superior Sherlock-ian pastiche; a smaller number of books provide pivotal clues in the stories by E.C. Bentley, A.A. Milne, Roy Vickers, and Ngaio Marsh. John Creasey leaves London for a tale of family trauma set in India; Julian Symons shows detective Francis Quarles picking up on a dying message whose import will be shudderingly obvious to every red-blooded American reader; and Christianna Brand’s “Dear Mr. Editor…” turns an editor’s routine request to one Christianna Brand for a contribution to a new collection into a fiendishly twisty tale of plot and counterplot. Although the stories naturally vary in quality, they all pull their weight; editor Edwards, avoiding obvious contributions like G.K. Chesterton’s “The Blast of the Book,” mixes wellknown and more obscure authors and resurrects at least several unjustly forgotten titles along the way; and the best of them, by Roberts, Vickers, Innes, and especially Brand, are cause enough for joy even among bibliophobes.

Maxwell, Alyssa Kensington (304 pp.) $26.00 | Aug. 30, 2022 978-1-4967-3617-8

A peek inside the lives of the rich, famous, and dead in Newport’s Gilded Age. Newspaper reporter Emma Cross, who grew up in Newport, has an in with the wealthy crowd, since she’s related to the Vanderbilts and engaged to well-connected Derrick Andrews. The couple has been invited to a small party at Beacon Rock, Edwin Morgan’s estate, because of Derrick’s support for yacht racing. Though Emma is very different from the spoiled ladies of the Four Hundred, she can hold her own. When she hears a strange noise while on a stroll after dinner with Lucy Carnegie, the only female member of the New York Yacht Club, they discover the body of a dead woman floating near the dock. Thus begins an investigation that the wealthy yachting families would love to see buried along with the body, which is finally identified as that of Lillian Fahey by a picture she carried with the inscription “To Wally Darling, from L” and a ring with two initials. Emma, who has a long history of crime-solving, works well with her childhood friend Jesse Whyte but not so much with resentful homicide investigator Gifford Myers, who is perhaps too subservient to the wealthy families who support the local economy. As she learns more about the clever and independent Lillian, whose father’s designs make him a force in the yachting world, she becomes convinced that Lillian didn’t commit suicide and starts looking for motives for murder.

Redmond, Lissa Marie Severn House (240 pp.) $29.99 | Aug. 2, 2022 978-0-7278-9132-7

Two cold-case homicide detectives take on an investigation that strains their partnership to the limit. Now that they’ve both saved each other’s lives, detectives Lauren Riley and Shane Reese of the Buffalo Police Department live together in Lauren’s house in a delicately balanced relationship that teeters on the romantic. While they’re out gathering information, they run into Reese’s high school classmate Chris Sloane, who’s opening a luxury spa just south of Ellicottville in New York’s Southern Tier snow belt. Soon after Chris invites Reese and Lauren to join a small group of friends at a reunion at his spa, Lauren realizes that a cold-case file she reviewed before Reese joined the squad concerned the murder of one of his high school classmates; the fact that he’d never mentioned his connection to the case shakes her faith in his objectivity. At the spa, Lauren meets the group, which includes Reese’s high school sweetheart, Amanda, and her jealous husband; Tyler Owstrowski, slimy former football star; podcaster Erica Diaz and her husband; and wealthy computer genius Seth Creehan. Erica, who specializes in true-crime stories, claims that she’s about to blow open the case of their murdered classmate. That night Erica’s throat is cut and a blizzard blows in, cutting off the area and leaving Lauren to manage the case with only a phone connection to the state police, who are busy evacuating stranded motorists. Now that Reese is a possible suspect, Lauren risks her life to get the evidence to prove him innocent.

Rue, Gretchen Crooked Lane (304 pp.) $26.99 | Sept. 6, 2022 978-1-63910-164-1

Taking over her aunt’s tea shop brings a woman head-to-head with an intrusive realtor, making her hope for a bit of leftbehind magic that might keep her safe. Back from Seattle and a mistaken marriage, Phoebe Winchester is surprised at how much she remembers about Raven Creek. Pulling into her Auntie Eudora’s—well, now it’s Phoebe’s—Lane End House, she finds memories of time spent with Eudora cheering her up in the wake of her aunt’s death. As Bob, Eudora’s handsome orange cat, encourages Phoebe to make herself at home, she’s happy to start establishing connections with almost everyone in town. Everyone, that is, except for troublesome Deirdre Miller, who keeps hounding Phoebe to sell Lane End House to her. Though Deirdre may think Phoebe isn’t going to stay, Phoebe’s just settling in, and the most important part of that ritual is reopening The Earl’s Study. She’s always known the tea shop as a special place, but looking at some of Eudora’s recipes, she starts to wonder if it’s a bit more special than she realized. Was Eudora brewing some magic along with the tea leaves? Phoebe hopes that running the store will help reconnect her with Eudora and answer this question, but her attention’s diverted by a dead body and an apparent murder at the back of the store. She’s relieved the deceased isn’t Rich, a childhood friend with whom she’s reconnected. But she wonders who might be interested in the shop, and why, and whether there’s more going on here than just tea.