Barrowman’s thriller picks include ‘Razorblade Tears’
I like to think I’m a good person, but hand me a serial killer novel or a book with brutal murders, and I’ll lick my lips and pour a nice chianti. Not surprisingly, when I revisited the mysteries and thrillers I enjoyed most this year, with a few exceptions, they tilted toward the darker in the genre. So… in the spirit of the season, raise a glass and read a good book. Cheers!
“Velvet Was the Night” (Del Rey), by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
Set during the violence of the Dirty War that ravaged Mexico’s shaky democracy in the 1970s, this slyly feminist pulp novel is a riveting read. Yes, Moreno-Garcia’s story of a lonely secretary inadvertently caught up in a political conspiracy is violent, but it has an impressive narrative swagger and characters radiating style and substance.
“Mrs. March” Feito.
Like Virginia Woolf ’s Mrs. Dalloway, Mrs. March is planning a party. Like Mrs. Dalloway, Mrs. March’s identity is fracturing. Feito’s fiendish narrator is one of the best I’ve come across in ages and presents Mrs. March to readers like she’s a specimen under glass. The narrator probes Mrs. March’s unraveling psyche with stiletto precision. Every page of this stellar debut draws blood.
“When Ghosts Come Home” (Morrow), by Wiley Cash.
This enthralling novel takes place over four days in 1984 in a small town in South Carolina. A plane crashes in the middle of the night on a deserted runway. A murdered Black man is found next to it. The plane has been emptied of its cargo. The repercussions of this event ripple across the tight community in shocking (and not so shocking ways). And the ending. Like the plane in the night. You won’t see it coming.
(Liveright), by Virginia
Carole E. Barrowman’s favorite books of 2021 include “Razorblade Tears,” “Velvet Was the Night” and “Clark and Division.”
“The Jigsaw Man” (Hanover Square Press), by Nadine Matheson.
Matheson’s novel is a gripping, grisly, accomplished police procedural set in London. Not only is Matheson’s serial killer a fully fleshed-out character (sorry, not sorry), but Detective Inspector Anjelica Henley is as worthy an opponent for any serial killer as Clarice Starling or Tony Hill.
“Razorblade Tears”
S.A. Cosby.
Furious action and two incredible main characters propel this revenge narrative. Ike, who is Black, and Buddy, who is white, are grieving the loss of their gay sons, who were married to each other, and have been murdered. Cosby’s cinematic narrative brilliantly balances Ike and Buddy’s brutality with their heart-breaking moments of parental regrets.
“The Last House on Needless Street” (Macmillan), by Catriona Ward.
Stephen King describes this book as a “nerve-shredder.” He’s not wrong. If you enjoyed the level of scare in “The Haunting of Hill House” and you’re fine with a narrator keeping you off-balance, then step inside the creepy boarded-up last house on Needless Street where its three occupants are locked inside. Maybe.
(Flatiron), by
“The Hollywood Spy” (Bantam), by Susan Elia MacNeal.
British spy extraordinaire Maggie Hope is in Hollywood. Los Angeles in 1943 is still “an idea, not a real city.” Elia MacNeal braids the glamour of Hollywood with the chilling reality of the rise of American Nazis and the blatant racism that follows. I loved this stellar novel.
“Lightning Strike” Kent Krueger.
“Lightning Strike” is about the first time Cork O’Connor assisted his father, then-Sheriff Liam O’Connor, in an investigation. With the author’s characteristic measured pacing, his accomplished prose, and his elegant plot set in the Northwoods, this is Cork’s rite of passage, unfolding during an investigation that “threatened” more than just “the peace in the Connor household.”
“The Burning Girls” (Ballantine), by C.J. Tudor.
(Atria), by William
Henry VIII’s daughter was crowned Bloody Mary because of her mass persecutions of Protestants, burning hundreds at the stake. This tragic history smolders beneath C.J. Tudor’s sinister English village mystery. Tudor’s twisty plot is populated with intriguing, damaged characters and a narrator with a haunting past. The slow burning suspense in this story leads to a crackling ending.
“Clark and Division” (Soho Crime), by Naomi Hirahara.
Hirahara’s highly accomplished historical mystery set in 1943 is about the lives of two sisters, Rose and Aki Ito, after their release from Manzanar, a Japanese concentration camp in California. Rose heads to Chicago first. When the rest of the family arrives, they learn Rose is dead, killed at the corner of Clark and Division.
Carole E. Barrowman is a professor of English at Alverno College and co-author of several novels, including the “Hollow Earth” trilogy and the “Orion Chronicles.“Info: www.barrowman books.com.