Riverhead Books, 416 pages, $28 This is not a murder mystery, but there are certainly mysterious machinations afoot. The reader involvement starts with the title. Trust? Should the reader trust Hernan Diaz, an potentially unreliable author? Hmm. I enjoyed “In the Distance,” another book by Diaz. It contained many diversions, all of which were inventive. So, inventive was my default expectation for Diaz’ new work. I entrusted him to fulfill this mission, and I was not disappointed. There are major divisions: four stories, at first glance. The first story is about a man of great financial ..read more

Flatiron Books, 336 pages, $17.99 (c2021) This has been nominated for an Edgar Award. S. A. Cosby’s most widely known books, “Blacktop Wasteland” and this book, “Razorblade Tears,” weren’t published until the author was in his 40s. His success is due to his perseverance and his outstanding writing. “Razorblade Tears” is grim and compelling. After each chapter was finished, I gulped and gasped as if there weren’t enough air. I don’t find the word “propulsive” attractive except when referring to jet fuel, but were I to use that word I would use it for this book. Cosby knows how to keep hi ..read more

Gallery/Scout Press, 304 pages, $27.99 Portland has stuttered on the axis and turned back towards winter. After surviving an April snowstorm (quelle horreur!), of course I picked up a book about death in the Arctic! It made my piddling 30+ degree weather seem absolutely balmy. Val Chesterfield is a professor and linguist. She has a working knowledge of some rare languages, one of which is West Greenlandic. It doesn’t come as a surprise, then, when she is asked by Professor Wyatt Speeks to see if she can communicate with a girl about eight years old who was dug out from inside a glacier, th ..read more

Pantheon, 320 pages, $27.99 This is not a mystery, but it plays with the mystery and mysticism of Buddhism, specially Tibetan Buddhism. Two young twin boys were released by their family to join the local monastery. All they had known to that point was their family's herding existence on the pastures of Mongolia. At the monastery they learn to be monks. One of them, Mun, is exalted to the Redeemer Who Sounds the Conch in the Darkness. Unlike other Buddhist sects, Tibetan Buddhists believe in the reincarnation of the special enlightened ones. Members of the Buddhist monasteries are sent out on ..read more

Lake Union Publishing, 411 pages, $14.95 (c2021) “The Venice Sketchbook” has been nominated for an Edgar Award. Wartime romance. Venice. Art. What more do you need? The end. Well, maybe a little more description. Rhys Bowen — of Evan Evans and Molly Murphy fame — has channeled Mary Stewart and given her readers a novel of love and danger set before and during World War II. Juliet Browning has left her drab, repetitive life in England to study art for one year in Venice. Although she is slightly older than her fellow art students, she still manages to form friendships and have a good tim ..read more

Ace, 496 pages, $17 This is not a murder mystery, although there may be one or two murders revealed at the very end. "The Impossible Us" is about Bee and Nick and their romance. Remember Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in “You’ve Got Mail”? Remember Patricia Highsmith’s “Strangers on a Train”? Remember “Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse”? Rrrrr. That’s the sound of the tumbler tumbling all those ideas and mixing them up. Ta-dah! “The Impossible Us.” Nick is a writer who has failed to publish a good book. He has resorted to ghostwriting and editing other people’s manuscripts. (A note: Personally, I ..read more

William Morrow, 304 pages, $27.99 “No One Will Miss Her” has been nominated for an Edgar Award. This book would have been massively better (and more surprising) had I not read the inner flap description. As it was, given the glaring hint, I figured out whodunnit after the first chapter. Be that as it may, I soldiered on. A body is discovered in a rental cabin in a rural community in Maine. Although her face has been blown off by a shotgun, there is no doubt among the male police officers present that the victim was Lizzie Ouellette. Why are they so certain? There is a quite visible mole o ..read more

Minotaur Books, 352 pages, $26.99 I had been reading a lot of dour, serious books, most of which got eliminated after about twenty pages, when I first picked up “Under Lock and Skeleton Key.” I read a few pages and my first thought was, this is too light. And I put it down. But over the next few days, I found myself thinking about how Gigi Pandian’s book had a lot of intriguing elements in it. The tone was clean-cut and throw-back. There were shades of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys — although I am a die-hard Brains Benton fan — and I renamed Pandian’s book, “The Mystery of the Lock and Skele ..read more

G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 400 pages, $27 (c2021) According to the author’s bio on the back flap of the book, Fabian Nicieza “is an Argentine American comic book writer and editor who is best known as the co-creator of Marvel’s Deadpool and for his work on titles such as X-Men, X-Force, New Warriors, Cable, and Thunderbolts.” So you know the book is going to be funny, right. One of Nicieza’s main characters is Andrea Stern, who spends most of the book looking like a beach ball with feet, i.e., she’s pregnant, with her fifth child. The other main character is Kenneth Lee, a reporter who ran afoul ..read more

Kensington, 304 pages, $15.95 (c2021) Erica Ruth Neubauer has a new book coming out soon, part of her series starring young American widow, Jane Wunderly ("Danger on the Atlantic"). The books are set in the Roaring Twenties and the covers are quite charming. I thought I would begin with her first book in the series, "Murder at the Mena House." The setting was Cairo, Egypt. The characters were pretty much limited to the grounds of the famous Mena House resort. I was in the mood for an Agatha Christie-like mystery: dead body, sleuth, exotic setting, soupçon of romance, antiquities, Art Deco! A ..read more