Andrea Mara

I WILL FIND YOU by Harlan Coben

It’s the mark of a fine crime writer that they can produce excellent series (in this case my favourite is those books featuring Myron Bolitar) but also create standalone novels, such as this one. Five years ago, David Burroughs began a life sentence for murdering his son Matthew. Burroughs, wrongly accused and convicted of the murder is rotting away in a maximum-security prison. The world has moved on without him. Then his sister in law, makes a surprise appearance during visiting hours bearing a strange photograph. It’s a holiday shot of a busy amusement park a friend shared with her, and in the background, is a boy bearing an uncanny resemblance to David’s son. Even though it can’t be, David just knows: Matthew is still alive. Shaken out of his institutional depression, David plans to escape, determined to achieve the impossible – save his son, clear his own name, and discover the real story of what happened. From Grand Central Publishing, this is out now. Click the link below for the Amazon page:

EVERYONE HERE IS LYING by Shari Lapena

Back in 2020 I was thoroughly gripped by Shari Lapena’s The End of Her and I remember using the term ‘anxiety porn’. It looks as if there is more of the same here.Welcome to Stanhope is regarded as a safe neighbourhood, and a place for families to live out the American Dream. William Wooler should fit right in there, at least on the surface. But he’s been having an affair, an affair that ends horribly one afternoon at a motel up the road. He returns to his house, devastated and angry, only to find his difficult nine-year-old daughter Avery home from school unexpectedly. William loses his temper. Hours later, Avery’s family declare her missing. Suddenly Stanhope’s reputation as being a suburban idyll takes a sever hit. William isn’t the only one on his street who’s hiding a lie. As witnesses come forward with information that may or may not be true, the neighbourly and trusting atmosphere starts to fragment, and then disintegrates completely. Everyone Is Lying is published by Bantam and will be available in July.

NO ONE SAW A THING by Andrea Mara

Dublin author Andrea Mara certainly has a thing for those awful parental moments when you think your child may have gone missing. She takes things one stage further here with a chilling account of an apparent abduction. A woman stands on a crowded tube platform in London. Her two little girls jump on the train ahead of her. As she tries to join them, the doors slide shut and the train moves away, leaving her behind. By the time she gets to the next stop, she has convinced herself that everything will be fine. But she soon starts to panic, because there aren’t two children waiting for her on the platform. There’s only one.Has her other daughter got lost? Been taken by a passing stranger? Or perhaps the culprit is closer to home than she thinks? No one is telling the truth, and the longer the search continues, the harder the missing child will be to find. Out in May, this is published by Bantam.

THE TRAP by Catharine Ryan Howard

There seems to be an abundance of fine women crime writers from Ireland at the moment, but they aren’t all from Dublin. It’s a long time since I read a novel by Cork-based author Catherine Ryan Howard but, inspired by a series of still-unsolved disappearances, The Trap looks to be a winner.A young woman uses herself as bait to try to track down the man who took her sister. The blurb says:

“Stranded on a dark road in the middle of the night, a young woman accepts a lift from a passing stranger. It’s the nightmare scenario that every girl is warned about, and she knows the dangers all too well – but what other choice does she have? As they drive, she alternates between fear and relief – one moment thinking he is just a good man doing a good thing, the next convinced he’s a monster. But when he delivers her safely to her destination, she realizes her fears were unfounded. And her heart sinks. Because a monster is what she’s looking for.”

Published by Bantam, The Trap will be out in August

THE LAST SONGBIRD by Daniel Weizman

Back to America for the final novel in this selection, and we are in California. A struggling songwriter and Lyft driver, Adam Zantz’s life changes when he accepts a ride request in Malibu and he picks up Annie Linden – a fabled 1970s music icon. During that initial ride, the two quickly strike a bond, and over the next three years, Adam becomes her exclusive driver and Annie listens to his music, encouraging Adam even as he finds himself driving more often than songwriting. When Annie disappears, and her body washes up under a pier – a heartbroken Adam plays detective, only for the cops to believe he was somehow responsible. Desperate to clear his name and discover who killed the one person who believed in his music , Adam digs into Annie’s past. As he spends his days driving around the labyrinth of LA highways, Adam comes to question how well he, or anyone else, knew Annie – if at all. This is published by Melville House and will be out in May.

THE POSTMAN DELIVERS . . . Lisa Jewell & Andrea Mara

Two examples here of what readers seem to be lapping up at the moment – domestic noir. Definition? Not exclusive or definitive, but these stories regularly feature ostensibly happy and successful families where, very often, a woman in the family is not all she seems to be, or has a dark secret. The background is often well-to-do suburbia, or perhaps the potent recipe for gossip and malice which exists at the school gate where mums meet twice a day engaged on the school run.

THE FAMILY REMAINS by Lisa Jewell

Domestic noir is often notable for the fact that police investigations only play a tiny part in the plots, with the author concentrating mainly on the nasty things that people who live on bland suburban estates do to each other. The latest novel from Lisa Jewell (left) is different, in that one of the central characters is London copper DCI Samuel Owusu, who takes charge of an investigation prompted by the discovery of a bag on human bones washed up on the Thames mud.

Owusu’s investigations lead to a trail of clues, in particular the seeds of a rare tree which lead DCI Owusu back to a mansion in Chelsea where, nearly thirty years previously, three people lay dead in a kitchen, and a baby waited upstairs for someone to pick her up. The Family Remains will be published by Century on 21st July.

HIDE AND SEEK by Andrea Mara

Ask any book reviewer with children – or grandchildren – what is the most painful crime plot they have to read and, if they are anything like me, they will say the trope of missing (presumed murdered) children. Still, it happens all too often in real life, and so it remains a legitimate subject for crime fiction. Dublin writer Andrea Mara (right) takes a stab at this most difficult of subjects in Hide and Seek.

A game of hide and seek has gone tragically wrong, and little Lily Murphy has done the ‘hide’ bit, but the ‘seek’ part is beyond the police and her distraught parents.She cannot be found. Years later, Joanna moves into what was the Murphy family home. What follows is an unsettling chain of apparent coincidences which not only threaten to unravel the mystery of Lily’s disappearance, but cast a shadow over Joanna’s sanity. Hide and Seek will be published by Bantam Press on 4th August.

July 4, 2022 0

ON MY SHELF . . . Mara, Massen, Perks & Spain

There’s some good stuff in the offing for crime fiction fans judging by this quartet of fine writers. In alphabetical order, we have:

HIDE AND SEEK by Andrea Mara

Confession time: while I have read and enjoyed previous novels by mesdames Massen, Perks and Spain, Andrea Mara is a new name to me. Turns out she is a compatriot of Jo Spain, also lives in Dublin’s fair City, and her previous novel All Her Fault was a bestseller. So, the loss is all mine. In Hide and Seek, it’s worst nightmare time, especially if you are a parent or, like me, a grandparent. The back-story is that little Lily Murphy goes missing from her Dublin suburb and is never found. Years later, Joanna moves into what was Lily’s home and from here, things just become more scary and spine tingling. This will be published by Bantam Press on 4th August.

FROM THE ASHES by Deborah Masson

Eve Hunter is well established now in the sharp-elbowed assembly of fictional Detective Inspectors. Her beat is The Granite City of Aberdeen. I reviewed – and enjoyed – two earlier novels, Hold Your Tongue (2019) and Out For Blood (2020) Ms Hunter returns now in an investigation into a fatal fire in an Aberdeen house used as a home for underprivileged children. There appears to be only one person who perished, but further enquiries uncover a rats’ nest of secrets and guilt which means all of the adults who were paid to care for the children may be implicated in an awful crime. From The Ashes is from Transworld Digital/Penguin and will be available from 21st July’

THE OTHER GUEST by Heidi Perks

Heidi Perks is another writer whose previous books The Whispers (2021) and Come Back For Me (2019) were seriously impressive. Click the links to read my reviews. Here, we are basking in the sun in White Sands, an expensive resort on a remote Greek island. Laila and her husband have paid top dollar for their holiday in the hope that they can repair their increasingly fractured relationship. She becomes what might be called ‘over-interested’ in another family at the poolside – a woman called Em, her husband and their teenage sons. Then there is a horrifying event which forces Laila to question her own sanity, and what follows involves the exposure of family secrets, and human frailty stripped back to the bone. This is a very early ‘heads-up’ for a book which will be available in January 2023.

THE LAST TO DISAPPEAR by Jo Spain

This is a tiny bit of a cheat, as I have already read this book on my Kindle, and reviewed it here. However, the publishers, in their wisdom, have sent me a mint hardback copy of the book, so I am offering it as a prize to anyone in UK or RoI who retweets this post. What are you waiting for?