I always enjoy Marilyn Stasio’s column “Crime” in the Sunday NYT’s book review section. On October 5, she reviewed four new mysteries set in four parts of the world. Archer Mayor’s well-known detective, Joe Gunther, now finds himself a senior officer with the Vermont Bureau of Investigation in “Proof Positive.” When a reclusive hoarder’s body is found buried under a pile of rubble, it doesn’t appear that is a case for the V.B.I. It turns out that the dead man, Benjamin Kendall, is a photojournalist who suffered a brain injury while serving in Vietnam. His photographs are going to be exhibited at the University of Vermont, but it seems that someone would rather keep the past buried than have attention draw to Kendall’s work.
Anne Perry sets her new mystery, “Blood on the Water,” once again in Victorian times. A party boat cruising the Thames is blown up by a terrorist bomb. Two hundred guests aboard the boat die, including foreign dignitaries celebrating the opening of the Suez Canal. William Monk, commander of the river police, is not trusted with the case because it is fraught with political overtones. But Monk sets out to prove that the original investigation and trial were farces.
Keigo Higashino sets his newest mystery “Malice” in Tokyo. Stasio writes that Higashino is ” a genius …in that he devises a motive to fit the crime.”
A less violent new mystery is M.L.Longworth’s “Murder on the Ile Sordou” Set in the Provencal region of France, Longworth pays close attention to the scenic beauty and food of the area. Her two detectives, Antoine Verlaque and Marine Bonnet, set out to discover the murderer of a guest at the grand hotel Locanda Sordou.
Four new mystery novels that have something for all readers.