“We Solve Murders,” by Richard Osman, Pamela Dorman Books, 400 pp.
A disappearance at summer camp
The Adirondacks have been the site of both great wealth and great poverty since the robber barons of the first Gilded Age thought to rusticate in the mountains. Here, Camp Emerson sits awkwardly next to a massive estate – both named for Ralph Waldo Emerson. Neither the estate’s mansion (christened Self-Reliance with breathtaking hubris) nor the banking tycoon who founded it would have impressed the New England philosopher.
As “The God of the Woods” opens, eight girls wake up in a cabin where nine had gone to bed the night before. Barbara, the missing girl, is a scion of the big house. And she’s not the first child of that family to have disappeared.
Liz Moore’s excellent interrogation of class and generational injustice hopscotches among the 1950s, 1961, and the summer of 1975. While those woods are perilously easy to lose one’s way in, Moore’s moral compass never veers off true north.
“The God of the Woods,” by Liz Moore, Riverhead Books, 496 pp.
Murder in an Italian village
For understanding the menace that lurks in a small village, Juliet Grames has penned a tale that would have Miss Marple bowing her head in mournful silence. “The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia” is set in the mountainous region of Calabria, Italy, in 1960. There are many goatherds, but this isn’t “Heidi.” Everyone tells the new nursery school teacher, American Francesca Loftfield, how safe the village is. You know, except for the mob justice meted out on corrupt priests. Oh, and there’s the occasional young man who “emigrated to America” and never, ever wrote home again. And the skeleton that just slid out from the post office’s foundation during a flood, and that no one seems terribly interested in identifying besides Francesca. “My training had prepared me to weather many forms of calamity, but not, it turned out, evidence of cold-blooded murder.”
The region is so poor and so remote that Francesca’s landlady was 30 years old before she first saw money. But even without cash, Santa Chionia’s way of life extracts harsh payment for deviation from what the village understands is necessary to keep that way of life unchanged. “My father used to tell me that growing up meant understanding who was at fault wasn’t what mattered; what mattered was who had to pay the consequences,” Francesca writes.
Secrets and lies in the Himalayas
Consequences loom large in “Death in the Air,” our final mystery taking place at high altitudes. Attorney Ro Krishna, flush from a legal settlement that came after a racist boss deprived him of his work, has decided to spend Christmas in the Himalayas at a luxury yoga retreat. Then a fellow guest is found murdered, and the owner asks the lawyer to step in and act as in-house counsel. Also staying at the retreat are a Hollywood star, a sort-of-former CIA agent, and the Visiting Blight, er, Light, a white yogi brought in “to teach yoga to Indian people.” This is the type of slow-burn story in which glamorous people conceal secrets behind smiles, while assuring one another that they are totally incapable of lying.
“I don’t know why, but I have a feeling I can trust you. Can I?” a character asks Ro. “For future reference, never ask anybody that again,” he responds.
In “Death in the Air,” explorations of inequality have more to do with questions of immigration, identity, race, and generational wrongs than of money. Most of the dramatis personae are so loaded that they regard Panthère de Cartier watches as sentimental trinkets.
“Death in the Air” by Ram Murali, Harper, 368 pp.
Ro himself is an utter charmer who carries the novel past its stutter-start opening, which takes us to Bermuda and London before landing where the action is. There is one subplot that had me gritting my teeth – deus ex pendulum is not a plot device that will work for every reader – and author Ram Murali doesn’t quite stick the landing. But I would happily sign on for another trip with Ro, even to a low-budget motel with a Cracker Barrel outside.
Source link : http://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=66e98cf0988a4f7c8827e02e1f70a0b0&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.csmonitor.com%2FBooks%2FBook-Reviews%2F2024%2F0917%2Fcozy-mystery-roundup&c=18287024148748357350&mkt=en-us
Author :
Publish date : 2024-09-17 01:47:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
