#37: Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer

A young British man on the autism spectrum decides to take a medical course in order to understand death, after his father's passing; instead, he stumbles onto a murder that everyone else believes was natural causes in Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer.

Rubbernecker is a crackling good thriller which owes a debt to both The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time as well as CSI.  Admittedly some of the plot's wheels creak a little bit as coincidences and happenstances fall into place, but as problems mount up for our flawed protagonist--including getting on the killer's radar--the book becomes a real page-turner towards the end.

I really enjoyed this thriller and will look for more of Bauer's books.

I borrowed this from the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana and read it quickly. 

#36: The Hades Factor by Gayle Lynds and Robert Ludlum

Current scientist and former badass John Smith grows suspicious when his girlfriend dies suddenly of a mysterious ailment; and when he looks into it more closely, he (naturally) unearths a global conspiracy in The Hades Factor, the first in the Covert One series.

Robert Ludlum apparently sketched in this series of novels before his death, and the details were handed over to a handful of writers; this first one fell to Gayle Lynds, who has been a pretty solid thriller writer in her own right.

This is a fun but entirely undemanding read, one of those novels where the characters never stop at a Taco Bell to eat but have time to train a mountain lion as a pet.  Interestingly, it was written just before 9/11, in what seems to be a rosier time when a diabolical corporate businessman could be the villain in an international thriller.

The Covert One series has numbered quite a few adventures to date and has its appeal to the technothriller/medical thriller crowd, and would be recommended to those readers.

I listened to a solid audiobook version on loan from the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#35: Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

A private eye reluctantly goes looking for a missing pair of teenage pop stars in an alternate-future Johannesburg in Lauren Beukes' Zoo City.

Beukes' genre-bender is sort of a whacked-out Chinatown, with telepathy and arcane magic, what might happen if William Gibson wrote The Little Sister.  But it has a very hip, contemporary vibe (as I saw in Beukes' Broken Monsters, the first novel I read from her) and an admirable, believable bit of world-building.

I will be grateful that I spent a year reading only women authors if for no other reason than I discovered South African author Lauren Beukes.  I will continue to look for her work.

I checked this out from the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana and read it quickly.  Recommended for fans of hard-boiled noir, near-future sci-fi, or some combination of both.

#34: Code 1013: Assassin by Leslie Trevor

A rising political star is assassinated at an airport, and then those around her begin dying one by one; thus it's up to policewoman Pepper Anderson to get to the bottom of it in Leslie Trevor's Code 1013: Assassin, a novel based on the Police Woman television show from the 1970s.

I saw this paperback for a shiny quarter at a flea market and was compelled to pick it up.  I spent an inordinate amount of time figuring out if gender neutral-sounding Leslie Trevor was a man or a woman, as I am only reading women authors this year, and was happy to learn Trevor is actually a pseudonym for a female author.  It turned out to be a rare find as only three of these were written.

No matter what the author's gender this book is still a product of a less politically correct time, where a "feminist" politician is made note of, as well as some other broadly portrayed characters.  Plenty of ironic nostalgia as well, depicting an era when a TV reporter could actually be politically powerful and cops didn't have to worry about pesky Miranda Rights.

Any reader who picks this up more or less knows what they are getting; definitely for fans.

#33: Girl at War by Sara Novic

A college student in New York begins to come to grips with her childhood in Croatia, eventually returning to confront a tragic moment in her past in Girl at War by Sara Novic.

The story runs in parallel lines; in the past, the young woman tries to understand the growing conflict in the context of her families' problems; and in the present, her older self finds she is struggling more and more to hide aspects of her childhood from her boyfriend and adopted family.

Novic grew up in Croatia during wartime and now lives in the United States, so I am sure she drew a lot on her own history for this striking, sometimes harrowing, debut novel.  It is an important story in that it reveals sides to this conflict that hasn't always been portrayed in American storytelling.

I checked this out from the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library in Richmond Indiana and read it quickly.

#32: Disclaimer by Renee Knight

A British woman is shocked to find that a new novel, inexplicably, reveals what she thought was a deeply-held secret from her past in Renee Knight’s Disclaimer.

Despite what I think is a poor title, Knight’s novel is a pretty solid thriller (with dashes of domestic drama) that follows two protagonists; one, the woman whose personal life has been made fictional, and is being read by family and friends; and the second a troubled elderly man whose son died saving a child’s life.  How their lives intersect in the past and present, as they tell conflicting stories about the same events, creates interest.

Knight is deft at peeling back the onion to a rather shocking event that even an experienced thriller reader like myself did not see coming.  Nicely done overall.

I borrowed this from the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library in Richmond Indiana.

#31: A Touch of Stardust by Kate Alcott

Clark Gable and Carole Lombard's blossoming relationship plays out in the foreground as the making of "Gone with the Wind" goes on in the background, all quietly observed by Carole's (fictitious) assistant in Kate Alcott's A Touch of Stardust.

Alcott is actually Patricia O'Brien and is married into the Mankiewicz family, whose members include Hollywood legends Herman and Joseph.  It seems reasonable to assume that she had some inside track in the writing of this rather light, charming read.  And if hearing those names excites you, this is definitely a recommended read.

But fans of Golden Age Hollywood stories in general, and all its players, will find plenty to like in this novel.

I listened to a very good audiobook version on loan from the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library.

#30: Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes

In bad old Detroit, an outsider artist turns to serial killing to improve his art in Lauren Beukes creepy, genre-bending thriller Broken Monsters.

Broken Monsters features a dedicated police detective who is also a single mom, her teen daughter (caught up in a dangerous online game with a child predator), a washed-up journalist trying to make a second career as a blogger, and a troubled homeless man, whose paths cross and re-cross with the killer.  Beukes almost makes Detroit into another character in the novel, which adds interest.

The chilling denouement slides--almost oozes--into a horror story in the last quarter of the novel, which caught me by surprise as I thought the book was more of a straight thriller.  But the storytelling had me turning pages quickly to the end, and Beukes' writing is hip and kinetic.

Unsettling but rewarding for readers who are interested in something more offbeat.

I checked this out from the Morrisson-Reeves Library in Richmond Indiana and read it quickly.

#29: When the Doves Disappeared by Sofi Oksanen

During World War II, Estonia is passed back and forth between Nazi and Soviet rule, leaving their citizens with constantly shifting allegiances in a bleak landscape; against this backdrop are two cousins, one a hardline Estonian patriot and the other a slippery sycophant, whose fates are tied together by the women they love in Sofi Oksanen's When the Doves Disappeared.

Oksanen's novel is a large-scale historical drama with insights into a part of the world and a culture I was unfamiliar with.  Oksanen writes that Estonia is "like a nameless corpse on the battlefield" in the greater world war and does a good job of making Estonia almost another character in the work.

Otherwise Oksanen hits a lot of genre beats as one cousin becomes a partisan, the other a sympathizer, and they both become involved with internment camps; alternating chapters set in the 60s in the midst of Cold War paranoia shows a less familiar slice of history.

Oksanen ties the threads up in a rather fatalistic ending, but features good storytelling throughout from a different voice.

I checked this out from the Morrisson-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana.  Recommended.

#28: Epitaph by Mary Doria Russell

Epitaph by Mary Doria Russell is a sweeping, literate western centered around the disparate group of lawmen and outlaws--and men who were both--that swirled around a battle that went down in history as the Gunfight at the OK Corral.

Where Russell's novel gives a fresh perspective is through the thoughts and actions of the wives, lovers, and other women associated with Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and the others who loomed large in the tale of the gunfight.

But plenty of time is spent on the more well-known figures, including some tertiary ones, as the actual gunfight does not occur until several hundred pages into the telling.  A briefer, and more melancholy, section tells about the aftermath, and what happened to most of the main players.

A really good contemporary western not only for fans of the genre but for readers interested in history.  Recommended.

I checked this out from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#27: The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

During World War II, two French sisters take different paths during the Nazi occupation of France; one becomes a freedom fighter, and the other finds herself  gradually becoming a collaborator, in Kristin Hannah's epic historical novel The Nightingale.

One sister, more freewheeling and adventurous, becomes the Nightingale of the title, a partisan agent who joins the resistance as a messenger but eventually helps fallen Allied airmen escape occupied France.  The other sister, who has a more mild personality (that caused childhood conflicts between the siblings), tries to protect her shattered family by making one painful choice after the next.

Hannah's novel is a "homefront" style war novel, but standard elements of melodrama and action slowly give way to some pretty dramatic, disturbing scenes as the vestiges of humanity--personified in the Nazi Final Solution--are stripped away in the waning days of the war.

A solid read for those interested in a different take on a standard war story.  I checked this out on audiobook from the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#26: City of Blood by Frédérique Molay

Thirty years ago, an artist symbolically buried his work as part of a modern art installation in a Parisian park; when the work is unearthed, a skeleton is found, sending Chief Nico Sirsky and the cops of the Criminal Investigation Division to work in Frédérique Molay's French thriller City of Blood.

Tidy, but television-sized police procedural moves at a fast clip as a fresh wave of similar murders--attributed to "The Butcher of Paris"--spurs the team on.  Sirsky also copes with the sudden onset of illness in his aging mother, and makes a deal with the heavens that wise cops don't make.

Glimpses of the French police and legal systems, as well as daily life, add interest.

I checked this out from Morrisson-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana and read it quickly, as I think it was meant to be consumed.

This novel comes from Le French Book, a publishing house bringing English translations of what seem to be French beach reads to new audiences--and I will definitely look for more of these.

#25: The Ghost Network by Catie Disabato

A mega-pop star disappears in Chicago, setting off a chain of other disappearances and strange events in Catie Disabato's The Ghost Network.

I'm already recommending Disabato's debut work to people without really being able to explain what it is.  It's a very meta novel, presented as a non-fiction account written about a Lady Gaga-esque figure who, as the story unfolds, had more than a passing interest in various underground movements.  A trio of quasi-investigators, sort of a pan-sexual Scooby Doo team, tries to find out what happens--until one of them also disappears in a boating accident, and another loses several fingers.

When the writer of this nonfiction account also goes missing, the manuscript is purportedly passed on to Catie Disabato herself, who footnotes and provides other commentary.

Almost a story within a story within a story, but as cleverly woven into reality as anything I've read since Marisha Pessl's Night Film, which was one of my favorite reads of the last few years.  Readers will definitely find themselves taking to Google to figure out what is (surprisingly) real and what Disabato made up (and what is a little bit of both).

An original novel that I read rather quickly, on loan from the Morrisson-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana.  Recommended.

#24: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

A troubled young woman riding the London train glimpses something disturbing out of her window, sending her into a dramatic spiral in Paula Hawkins' The Girl on the Train.

This debut novel is frequently compared to Gone Girl, and in the way that they are both very cold-hearted thrillers I would agree; but I saw a lot more Rear Window.

Even more notable is the classic unreliable narrator, in this case an alcoholic protagonist with a failed marriage--but still stalking her ex-husband--who is prone to blackouts.

Two other point of views--flashbacks to a missing woman in the midst of a tumultuous affair, and the ex-husband's second wife--round out an interesting narrative.

A very tight thriller, frequently shocking.  I bought this in hardback and read it in a single day on a flight between Italy and the States--and saw several others on the plane doing the same.

#23: Uniform Justice by Donna Leon

A young man at a Venetian military academy appears to have hung himself; but veteran cop Guido Brunetti thinks differently, even as the boy's own family stands against him in Donna Leon's Uniform Justice.

Leon has written a very solid and well-acclaimed mystery series, set in Venice, a place which I had a chance to visit this summer for the first time (part of the reason I sought out a handful of these before I left).

Not only are the mysteries always compelling, but having spent part of the last several summers in Italy I find that her portrayal of Italian life and culture to be especially interesting.

Brunetti also has a very rich family life and cast of supporting characters, and the more of these I have read (this was my third) the more I have appreciated those elements.  Again this one has a slightly melancholy, but perhaps appropriate, conclusion.

I feel like I am the last mystery reader to have discovered Donna Leon, but nonetheless will continue to recommend the Brunetti series to friends, and will look for more.  I bought this one from a Goodwill and read while traveling in Italy.

#22: The Torso by Helene Tursten

When part of a corpse washes ashore, it's up to the dedicated cops of Goteborg, Sweden to hunt down the killer, a bloody trail that takes Irene Huss and her team to the seedy streets of Copenhagen in Helene Tursten's The Torso.

Strong, but grisly, police procedural for those looking for fresh names in the Scandinavian mystery market.  Tursten has created a complete, nuanced detective in Huss, and contrasts complex domestic scenes with vivid graphic violence.

Tursten truly pulls no punches as Huss crosses paths, and sometimes bullets, with organized crime lords, sex traffickers, and at least one serial killer; a killer who seems to be someone close to the investigation.

This is the second Tursten novel I have read recently and find her work to be right up there with some of my favorites in this genre, including Jo Nesbø, Arnaldur Indriðason, and Åsa Larsson.  Recommended for fans.

I read this in one sitting on a flight from Florence Italy to Indianapolis Indiana.

#21: Thirteen White Tulips by Frances Crane

A young doctor's wife gets into a compromising situation (1950s-speak) with a handsome rogue and concludes the only way out is murder; but when she arrives at his San Francisco home she finds him already dead, just the beginning of a very tangled plot in Frances Crane's Thirteen White Tulips.

I really enjoyed this breezy--exceedingly breezy-- tale, as the young wife enlists the help of private eye Pat Abbott, his very handy wife Jean (the narrator, who also weighs in on fashion and society), and their preternaturally smart dog Pancho, in uncovering the cause of the murder.

Crane tries for a Nick and Nora Charles vibe, and succeeds, with a real sense of the time, place, and culture.

I bought this with no prior knowledge from a crate of Penguin paperbacks (with green covers) from in front of a little used bookstore in Rome, Italy.  Crane apparently wrote a number of mysteries featuring Jean Abbott, and I would definitely look for more.

#20: Lady Killer by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

A young woman marries an older man for his money, and soon learns this was an unhappy mistake; but on a cruise, she is distracted by another unhappy couple who seem more murderously inclined in Elisabeth Sanxay Holding's Lady Killer.

I see Holding's name a lot, but had never sought out any of her books until I made a vow to read only women authors in 2015, and found myself hungry for a good noir.

The protagonist, Honey, finds herself wound tighter and tighter in a dark web leading to a tense, ultimately downbeat conclusion; but what I enjoyed about Holding's writing was not only the crackling noir elements but the artfully rendered take on marriages, relationships, and friendships between men and women. I will definitely look for more of her work.

I found this for my beloved Kindle and read it quickly.

#19: The Necessary Beggar by Susan Palwick

In a parallel world, a young man from a close family is accused of killing a noble beggar, and the entire family is exiled to a bleak, heartless place--our own world.

The Necessary Beggar is a fantasy/sci-fi novel with strong overtones of the immigrant experience in the United States, as this dramatically displaced family first appears in a refugee camp in a remote section of the United States, and tries to make their way from there.

Their trials and tribulations--compounded by the young man's suicide, and subsequent re-appearance as an unhappy ghost--are interesting throughout and certainly parallel contemporary experiences (minus the ghost).

Susan Palwick's novel is rewarding on many levels as a fantasy novel as well as a contemporary fable.

I found this book on a goodbye shelf at the local Hastings bookstore and read it in one day on my flight to Italy.

#18: Death in a Strange Country by Donna Leon

When an American soldier from a nearby base dies under unusual circumstances, Venetian Commissario Guido Brunetti starts an investigation that crosses social, political, and international lines in Donna Leon's Death in a Strange Country.

This is the second Leon novel I have read in this popular, long-running series, and I enjoyed it as much for the slices of Italian life shown as the mystery itself.  After spending several weeks in Italy over the years--though never visiting Venice--I think the philosophical side of life in Italy rings true.

But it's still a good mystery, with Brunetti getting into several near-miss scrapes before wrapping the story up--not neatly, but perhaps as neatly as anything gets from such a tangled web.

I found this in a Goodwill store in Frankfurt, Indiana and read it quickly.

#17: How to Get Into the Twin Palms by Karolina Waclawiak

A young Polish woman living on the margins of Los Angeles dreams of entering a Russian club across the street from her apartment, but learns to be careful what she wishes for in Karolina Waclawiak's How to Get into the Twin Palms.

Waclawiak's novel is a well-done contemporary immigrant story, alternating between humorous and heartbreaking as we follow her journey, which mirrors a mythological descent as aggressive wildfires prick at the edges of her existence.

Vivid in portraying both the lives of expat Eastern Europeans and the fringes of California society, How to Get into the Twin Palms is a worthwhile read.

I bought this from the independent publishing house Two Dollar Radio and read it quickly.

#16: W is for Wasted by Sue Grafton

Private Eye Kinsey Milhone gets involved in two seemingly unrelated cases; in the first, a former private eye colleague is shot and killed, and in the second a homeless man turns up with her name in his pocket.  How both these cases gradually, and then suddenly, become intertwined is the story behind W is for Wasted, Sue Grafton's latest in her long line of alphabet mysteries.

My wife, an English instructor and avid literary reader, has always listed Grafton as a guilty pleasure; I think I stopped reading around D is for Deadbeat but decided, in my year of reading only women authors, to give it another go with her latest.

This is a solid private eye novel with a very complex protagonist whose personality has evolved slowly over time.  Interestingly, although many years have passed in real time, the novels still take place in the late 80s, a seemingly far away pre-internet and cell phone era where real sleuthing by phone book and 3x5 card was preeminent. 

I listened to this on audiobook from the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana and will definitely dig into more of these.

#15: The Beige Man by Helene Tursten

The cops of Goteborg, Sweden, have their hands full when two joyriding kids, escaped from juvenile detention, run down a retired cop; near the crime scene, they find the corpse of a young girl.  How these cases become linked, much to the dismay of Irene Huss and her team, is the core of Helene Tursten's The Beige Man.

For those in a post-Dragon Tattoo funk, Tursten's novel is a welcome addition to the Scandinavian mystery canon.   

The Beige Man is a very tough, above average police procedural that focuses on organized crime and sex trafficking during a typically brutal Swedish winter.  There is an eclectic group of detectives much like Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels; in fact, the lead detective, Huss, is reading an 87th Precinct book at one point.

All in all quite satisfying, with the title not explained until the very last page.

I checked this out from the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana, and will look for more of her writing.

#14: MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood

A man-made plague has torn through the world, leaving an eclectic group--including former eco-cultists, scientists and their lab creations, and psychic pig/human hybrids--to forge a new path in MaddAddam, the end of Margaret Atwood's post-apocalyptic trilogy (begun with Oryx and Crake).

Not really a stand-alone novel, but certainly satisfying for those who enjoyed the first two (as this one reveals the colorful history of Adam One and Zeb, as well as other choice nuggets). 

For general readers, how the characters try to explain what happened to a young boy called Blackbeard, inadvertently starting a new world history/religion, is particularly interesting.

I am a Margaret Atwood fan, and though this trilogy does not stand up to The Handmaid's Tale or some of her other works, it is still worthwhile as a whole for apocalypse fiction fans.

I checked this out on audiobook from Morrisson-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#13: The Forgotten Girls by Sara Blaedel

A Copenhagen cop moves to a Missing Persons unit, and almost immediately is assigned the confounding case of a recently-deceased mentally disabled woman who was actually reported dead thirty years prior.  Meanwhile, a serial rapist stalks the cop's hometown of Hvalso, and she slowly begins to realize the cases are tied together in Sara Blaedel's The Forgotten Girls.

Blaedel is apparently well established in Denmark, but this is her first novel translated into English.  A good thing, as this is a solid, albeit grim, police procedural livened somewhat by the interpersonal relationships between the cop, her new partner, and her longtime best friend, an investigative journalist on the brink of her wedding.

The tough subject matter--which discusses the often poor history of mental health care, and a series of rapes--isn't helped by a downbeat, enigmatic ending.  But it is a good read for the discerning, and it's nice to have a fresh voice (to English readers) from the Scandinavian crime scene.

I borrowed this from the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana.