Death in the Details by Katie Tietjen

This is a pretty good novel, plays mostly fair. I kinda spotted the who really early on, but not the why or anything. I'm familiar with the Nutshell Studies that inspired the novel, I've even seen them with my own eyes (probably about the same time as the author did). It's an interesting idea to turn what was mostly meant as an instructional tool into an investigatory one. A few minor glitches, and a slight tendency for earnestness, but mostly a decent novel.

The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow

This is a longer book, past gritty through cynical, landing somewhere between bitter and angry. Lots of wasted lives, and lots of international bad neighboring. A slim ray of hope is a couple of people manage to get themselves clear of the violence, maybe a little out of the mud. Well written, with a gallows humor twisting the turns of phrase.

The Lost Book of Bonn by Brianna Labuskes

Sara spotted this in the library, after we both enjoyed the hell out of *The Librarian of Burned Books*, she read it first. This is maybe slightly better than that book, somehow managing to be more hopeful in spite (or maybe because) of the greater magnitude of loss in if. Multiple story lines carried off with remarkable grace, again a subtext bubbling to the surface screaming about the present day. Very highly recommended.

Somebody Owes Me Money by Donald E. Westlake

Hey, I read this book this morning in a coffee shop. Funny, quippy-witty, but tense as all heck, with some very-early-stage love story going on. Westlake's reputation does preceed him, and it's well earned. Definitely seems to have a knack for stories about normal guys in over their heads, sliding sideways.

Paper Cage by Tom Baragwanath

A grim and gritty novel, bristling with menace, stuffed to the brim with characters it's difficult to like--mainly because they mostly don't seem to like themselves, especially the POV. It's a crime novel, and there are dead bodies, but the central crime is not murder (which seems kinda rare). Not a particularly graceful novel, in prose or story or character, but that may be a cultural difference; it absolutely stinks of lived experience. Just about everyone in the novel is a racist, it's a shock the wannabe White Savior is the worst.

Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak

This is a moderately creepy mystery, with interesting and functional Horror bits (or at least a ghost story). Lots of classic thriller/mystery/horror tropes being riffed on, inverted, subverted. A strong whiff of something like redemption, and a bright love story threaded in. Some moments of people (especially the POV) behaving dubiously, and some instances when the choice of present tense narration seems to clash with the story, but nothing crippling, and the art in the book (and in the story of the book) is a strength.

Black Wolf by Kathleen Kent

 

Weird to read a novel set in 1990, just after the collapse of the Soviet Union (well, sort of--the novel conveys a reality in which the collapse was a slow-motion thing, still ongoing in 1990, which comports with my memories, if not the common understanding/memory) that has spy stuff at its core, even if the novel is really at heart more about the serial killer in it, and all the misdirection around him. The prose is really more stolid than anything else, but it's functional, and the story is mostly plausible: serial killers in the US have thrived because they could move around; serial killer thrived in the USSR because the government refused to acknowledge that they could exist. The main character is interestingly quirky, but I'm not sure there's enough to her to sustain the length of this novel. Not horrible, not great.