AMY AMONG THE SERIAL KILLERS by Jincy Willett

in the pandemic’s early days, but Lucy’s view from rural safety of the havoc wrought in New York feels superficial and possibly offensive. Strout’s characteristic acuity about complex human relationships returns in a final scene between Lucy and her daughters, but from a writer of such abundant gifts and past accomplishments, this has to be rated a disappointment.

Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Olive Kitteridge.

White, Kate Harper/HarperCollins (384 pp.) $16.99 paper | June 28, 2022 978-0-06-294-545-7

A woman’s second marriage is thrown into question when the investigation of her first husband’s murder is reopened. Emma Hawke is happily married to Tom, a handsome widower and entrepreneur, when detectives show up at their Connecticut home to tell her they’re reopening the unsolved murder investigation of her first husband, Derrick, who was killed a few months before she met Tom. As more details emerge about what might have happened to Derrick the night he was killed, the police, and even Emma, start to question Tom, who, she quickly discovers, had actually seen her from afar several times at various speaking engagements before they’d officially met. Between a possibly murderous new husband, a villainous former brother-in-law, an overeager lovesick assistant who attempts to lead Emma astray, an embezzlement scheme that begets yet another (unrelated) murder, and yet another attempted murder following that, either Emma is very unlucky or the plot is very much over-the-top. Because the characters are so flat as to feel like clip-art graphics, it’s hard not to go for the second explanation. The dialogue is wooden and unnatural, as if it’s being used to give readers information and not portray actual people talking. Emma is a tedious character, as is Tom, which makes the idea that he might be a murderer hard to buy. And for all the drama, the book moves slowly, with the tension only picking up in the final third. By the time the reader has learned what happened and why, it’s a letdown because it’s so hard to invest in any of the characters.

Willett, Jincy St. Martin’s (400 pp.) $27.99 | Aug. 23, 2022 978-1-2502-7514-1

In her third book about novelist and erstwhile workshop teacher Amy Gallup, a (possibly serial!) murder falls into Amy’s lap, and violence, hijinks, and romance ensue.

It’s been several years since Amy fought off a killer writer, and she’s enjoying the peace and quiet—living with her dog and “working” every day (even when that just means staring at a blank screen). Her former pupil Carla Karolak is finding success with Inspiration Point, a writing colony of sorts. Then one day Carla finds something unexpected in one of the writing cells: a body. Soon Carla, her co-worker Tiffany, the workshop crew from Amy’s previous class, and Amy herself are awash in bodies, some of which are dismembered, some not. Enter a ridiculously smarmy “Writing Guru” and a gifted children’s author who may or may not be a mystic. The local police will only be so much help, so Carla and Amy, plus Tiffany and former workshop member Chuck, must team up to flush out the murderer and solve the case. The energetic tongue-in-cheek tone creates an interesting complement to—and veil for—the fact that this story is both gory and psychologically intense. When Amy confronts the killer at last, Willett chooses to ascribe the pronoun it to the killer, calling it “a creature” and effectively erasing any sense of humanity while dialing up the creepiness. This decision neatly symbolizes the moral that serial killers do not deserve the fame and notoriety that often help drive their actions; Amy muses that killing for sport renders one “an error of evolution.” The novel effectively refuses to excuse our own voyeuristic tendencies when it comes to serial killers, though—recognizing that it has just provided an elaborate fictional story for entertainment that centers around a brutal serial killer. What a delightfully mind-bending and complicit place to land.

Benn, James R. Soho Crime (336 pp.) $27.95 | Sept. 6, 2022 978-1-641-29298-6

A righteous American soldier helps British intel in its probe of the French Resistance. Capt. Billy Boyle’s brief respite in Cairo is cut short when he’s reassigned to a special, top-secret mission in October 1944. What should be a simple Mediterranean journey to the new HQ in France becomes a dangerous passage with the discovery that the Germans are in pursuit. Billy’s guide, Erasmos Papadakis, is accused by his fellow Greek resistance fighters of working with the Germans. When Erasmos is shot dead from afar, it’s a reminder of the constant dangers of war and the challenge of distinguishing allies from enemies. Billy’s new assignment, sorting out the true allegiances in the French Resistance, means a reunion with his longtime sidekick, Polish baron Piotr “Kaz” Kazimierz, and his British ladylove, Diana Seaton, who’s now working with Christine Granville, a legend among the British intelligence arm known as the Special Operations Executive. Although the books in Benn’s long-running series have evolved from straightforward whodunits with a wartime background into ambitious, atmospheric thrillers, broader both in scope and literary finesse, two mysteries propel the action here: the murder of gregarious Oxford-educated SOE officer Dickie Thorne and the disappearance of 2 million francs last seen in the custody of deceased half-German half-French liaison Albert Schenck, a Gestapo officer. Can Schenck’s widow, Marie, shed any light on this missing fortune? A lengthy historical note traces the real-life roots of some of the characters.

Berenson, Laurien Kensington (304 pp.) $26.00 | Aug. 30, 2022 978-1-4967-3578-2

With Melanie Travis away on vacation, it falls to her feuding aunts to solve a crime. Widowed Peg Turnbull is a respected breeder of standard poodles and a wellknown judge for many different breeds. When her sister-in-law, Rose Donovan, a former nun married to a former priest, turns up at a show, Peg wonders why, as they have a bad relationship due to the disapproving things Rose said when Peg married her brother. Although Rose prefers cats and finds dog shows boring, she says she wants to get to know Peg better and asks her to be her partner at a bridge club. On their arrival, the pair meet their fellow players: a mixed group of men and women, some married, some not, some much better at bridge than others. Despite their own rusty skills and Peg’s observation that at least one of the teams is cheating, the women both enjoy themselves. At their second session, they go down to defeat against the most skilled of the group, Mick Doran and Stan Peters. When Stan is shot to death, the frenemies decide to do a little sleuthing and use the information they’ve picked up at bridge club to line up some suspects even though a detective Peg has crossed swords with before warns them off. Ignoring him, they question all the bridge players. But when someone shoots at Peg and her three precious poodles, it seems likely that they’re closing in on the killer.

Burns, Valerie Kensington (336 pp.) $15.99 paper | Aug. 30, 2022 978-1-4967-3822-6

A Navy brat inherits a bakery in rural Michigan. Madison Montgomery carries all the baggage of a typical cozy heroine, albeit in a Louis Vuitton suitcase. Dumped by her high-earner fiance: check. Contentious relationship with her father, an admiral, that makes her yearn to succeed on her own terms: check. Inheritance from her grandmother with some pesky strings attached: check. Less common for the genre, Maddy is Black, and she’s young enough to document her life on Instagram. When she learns that she’s now the owner of Baby Cakes in New Bison, Michigan, provided that she operates her late grandma’s bakery for a full year and cares for her giant mastiff, Baby, she responds with a burst of hashtags: #NewVenture #EntrepreneurLife #LoveEnglishMastiffs. With the help of loyal Baby Cakes employees Leroy Danielson and Hannah Portman, sales skyrocket. When mayor Paul Rivers is killed in the bakery, prompting the police to shut down the crime scene, Maddy simply moves the operation into her grandmother’s large, though uninspected and unlicensed, home kitchen and continues to sell her popular delicacies out of her garage. From then on, it’s pretty cookie cutter. Maddy dates most of New Bison’s eligible bachelors until she figures out who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy and rattles enough cages that the killer eventually comes after her.