In her “Crime” column in the NYT’s Book Review section, Marilyn Stasio discusses four new mystery novels. Three of the books revolve around cities in North America and Europe. “Until She Comes Home” by Lori Roy is set in Detroit, Michigan, in 1958. Most of the residents haven’t begun to notice the decay that is creeping into their working-class neighborhood. Dutch Elm disease is beginning to attack the beautiful old trees in the area. This disease seems to parallel a wave of problems–decaying factories, littered streets, prostitution–that is becoming more apparent. Then a black woman is murdered and a white woman disappears. A sense of community continues for a while, until one by one, the good people of the neighborhood start revealing deep, shameful secrets.
“The Abomination” by Jonathan Holt is set in Venice. The plot involves a complex computer game, Carnivia, in which masked visitors enter a creepy 3-D world of Venice. Stasio calls the plot preposterous, but does admit that there is something very haunting about masked avatars meeting in perfect replicas of major Venetian landmarks.
“Dream With Little Angels” is set in the rural town of Alvin, Alabama. Leah Teal is a police officer who failed to solve the case of a little girl who disappeared in 1975 and then was found months later under a willow tree. Teal has never forgotten the case and when more little girls begin to vanish, she begins to panic.
Tom Piccirilli’s “Last Whisper in the Dark” is his sequel to “The Last Kind Words.” He had gotten rid of several members of a family of burglars and con men in this previous novel. Now other members of the family have taken over “business.” Stasio calls this a “boldly original sequel.”