Six mysteries for summer readers to solve
The season’s new crop includes Stacey Abrams’s second thriller and the latest from Ivy Pochoda and Joe Ide
Review by Lisa Levy
May 26, 2023 at 11:00 a.m. EDT
- ‘Rogue Justice,’ by Stacey Abrams
- ‘Sing Her Down,’ by Ivy Pochoda
- ‘The Senator’s Wife,’ by Liv Constantine
- ‘The Island of Lost Girls,’ by Alex Marwood
- ‘Fixit,’ by Joe Ide
- ‘The Gulf,’ by Rachel Cochran
‘Rogue Justice,’ by Stacey Abrams
Avery Keene, a young, ambitious clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court, is back in this second thriller by two-time Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. Keene’s previous outing, “While Justice Sleeps,” left her bone tired and itching to blow off steam: She buys a ticket to Negril, Jamaica, and promptly hits the casino, counting cards until she gets the boot. Back at work, she faces a slew of congressional hearings — serious ones that remind the fierce workaholic that a longer break might be in order. But how can she relax when there’s so much more rot to expose?
A close friend of the president’s (who is not a friend of Keene’s) calls her “to offer a warning,” and Keene balks, until the source says he chose to alert her because she is “one of the few honest people [I know] in D.C.” But honesty in D.C. isn’t simple, and Keene finds herself in a high-stakes escapade involving federal judges on the take. With “Rogue Justice,” Abrams delivers another smart, zippy thriller; in Keene, she’s created a dogged and determined hero who could take down a whole slate of bad guys between her morning latte and a late lunch. (Doubleday, $29)
‘Sing Her Down,’ by Ivy Pochoda
Ivy Pochoda was a professional squash player, and her characters are as tough as tough gets. Pochoda has delivered another brutal blow in her latest, an existential western that starts with a jailbreak and rip-roars its way through a threatening landscape. Most of Pochoda’s attention and ambition are in the relationship between “Florida” (Florence) Baum and “Dios” (Diana Diomary) Sandoval, cellmates in an Arizona women’s prison who seize a chance to break out.
Now that they’re free, Dios’s crush on Florida becomes overbearing, and their impulsive escape causes all kinds of havoc. Most seriously, Florida is accused (rightly or wrongly, I’m not telling) of killing a corrections officer. When the convicts split up, Dios remains obsessed with Florida; she can’t stop dreaming of her. Meanwhile Florida wants to put serious distance between her prison self and the solid citizen she’s trying to become, making the most of her unexpected second chance. As in her most recent book, “These Women,” Pochoda demonstrates keen insight into the minds and hearts of desperate people. In her novels, as on the squash court, she never misses a shot. (MCD, $28)
‘The Senator’s Wife,’ by Liv Constantine
“The events leading up to the destruction of Sloane Chase’s carefully ordered world had already been set in motion.” The first line of “The Senator’s Wife,” by Liv Constantine — two sisters writing under a pseudonym — places this book solidly among their lavish thrillers: Constantine serves up piping-hot luxe locales and high-toned accessories, meaning both disposable minions (accessories to the crime) and a pair of Louboutins that count as a trinket in this world of high fashion and drama.
Greed, vengeance and other popular sins of the very rich figure in Constantine’s first thriller set in Washington. The aforementioned Sloane Chase is happily married and the head of an important philanthropic group. She unexpectedly becomes a widow when her senator husband, Robert, is killed in an accident along with his troubled cousin, Peg. Sloane remarries quickly — her new husband is also a senator, as well as a close family friend: Whit Montgomery had been unhappily married to Peg, and in the aftermath of the accident Sloane and Whit find solace in each other. The catch: Sloane has serious health problems, and Whit hires a home health aide to assist her. Sloane quickly becomes suspicious of the young, beautiful and hyper-efficient woman living in her house, doling out her pills and eating intimate dinners with her husband, who is acting strangely. Backstabbing, gaslighting and double-crossing — “The Senator’s Wife” has all you want in a thriller and all that you fear to be true about Washington. (Bantam, $28)
‘The Island of Lost Girls,’ by Alex Marwood
Alex Marwood is the pseudonym of a veteran British journalist, and she brings the tools of the investigative reporter to her crime fiction. In “The Island of Lost Girls,” we’re on an island called La Kastellana, home of a 12-year-old named Mercedes and the new stomping ground of billionaire Matthew Meade. Twenty years later, a woman named Robin travels to La Kastellana looking for her missing 17-year-old daughter, Gemma. The island, now a full-on playground for the rich and richer, is not where most mothers would like their wayward daughters to turn up.
It’s not looking good for Robin or Gemma — jet-setters are not great sources of information unless you’re looking for molly and the nearest DJ. But Marwood peppers her book with the flavor and history of the island, presenting the party spot as a place with a real and rich past. The novel reads like a slick travel magazine at times: Mercedes’s mother makes a simple dinner that contains “little goat’s cheeses from the mountains, fine prosciutto, bottled artichoke hearts charred on the grill in their oil, a head of grilled romaine.” In addition to the story of a mother and daughter, Marwood wrings unlikely suspense from the fate of the tourism industry: Will the island become “the new Capri,” as Meade is advertising it, or will the disappearing girls scare off the professional partiers? (Harper, $30)
‘Fixit,’ by Joe Ide
If you are new to Joe Ide’s IQ series, it’s a clever spin on what it might be like if the next Sherlock Holmes appeared in an African American neighborhood in Los Angeles. IQ, which stands for Isaiah Quintabe, is one of the most singular characters in crime fiction — asocial, brilliant and deeply moral. Though the world he lives in devalues these qualities, he perseveres in pursuing gangsters, hustlers and scam artists. In “Fixit,” the sixth book in the series, IQ’s erstwhile girlfriend, Grace, is kidnapped by an unhinged hit man named Skip Hanson. IQ reteams with an occasional sidekick, hustler Juanell Dodson, to try to find her.
Ide’s book, as usual, is full of oddball characters espousing philosophies of the street. When Isiah figures out Skiphas kidnapped Grace, he knows this will get nasty: When he gets going, Skip’s desire for destruction is formidable. But can Skip really outsmart genius Isaiah? He certainly tries, issuing a steady and strange stream of directives meant to throw Isaiah off. There is, however, another player in this twisted game. Don’t count Grace out — she’s plenty formidable herself. (Mulholland, $28)
‘The Gulf,’ by Rachel Cochran
“The Gulf” is Cochran’s debut, and it’s a beauty. The setting, though, is decidedly ugly: a small Texas town called Parson. The Texas coast is no Hamptons: It’s murky, industrial, with oil-slick water and offshore drilling not too far in the distance. It’s a working waterfront, not a relaxing one. The novel is set in the 1970s, when Parson has been decimated by a hurricane and devastated by the loss of many of its sons in the Vietnam War.
A local woman, Lou, is working to restore the home of an elderly neighbor, Miss Kate, who had been kind to Lou during her chaotic childhood. When Miss Kate is murdered, Lou hastens to figure out what happened, but her sleuthing and her emotional life are disrupted by the return of Miss Kate’s daughter, Joanna, Lou’s first love. To say Lou carries a torch for her would be an understatement — it’s more like a derrick. That their queer love had been secret jibes with what Joanna and Lou uncover about Joanna’s family and the town, secrets that might reveal who killed Miss Kate and why.
Cochran’s novel is rich in story and setting, with the mournful backdrop of a natural disaster, a war and forbidden love gone wrong. Lou is a complicated and empathetic character, and it’s her furious love for Miss Kate, for Joanna and for Parson that makes “The Gulf” an auspicious debut. (Harper, $30)
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