★ The Tainted Cup
Robert Jackson Bennett. Del Rey, $28 (432p) ISBN 978-1-9848-2070-9
wildlife are in decline due in part to the changing climate. His fiancée, Cara Sharpe, has escaped the decaying city where she and Ben live for a private island community called Sanctuary Rock, which is owned and managed by Sir John Pemberley. Cara’s letters to Ben, which have grown more and more emotionally distant during her stay, hint at “critical work” being conducted at Sanctuary Rock. When Cara fails to return home as planned, she writes to Ben that she will be staying on the island indefinitely to help Pemberley with his “mission.” Alarmed, Ben sets out to retrieve her. When he reaches Sanctuary Rock, however, Cara isn’t there, and Ben starts to suspect that she’s been recruited for something horrifying. Murray excels at building a believable futuristic environment without getting bogged down in minutiae, and he wrings plenty of suspense out of Ben’s increasingly harrowing investigation of Sanctuary Rock’s mysterious purpose. This fires on all cylinders. Agent: Kimberly Witherspoon, InkWell Management. (Jan.) gentle as a bunny rabbit.” But the more she digs, the more suspicious things look. Baker nimbly balances Kate’s personal and professional struggles, never letting one steal the spotlight from the other. John Galligan fans will enjoy this. (Jan.)
Bennett (the Founders trilogy) brilliantly melds genres in this exceptional mystery-fantasy, the first in his Shadow of the Leviathan series. Dinios Kol has been tapped to serve as the new assistant to
Ana Dolabra, an eccentric investigator with a reputation for solving cases blindfolded and without leaving her home. Dolabra’s recently been reassigned from the Khanum Empire’s richest enclaves to a dull backwater, where she and Kol get a knotty problem to untangle. Kol, whose prior experience consists of investigating pay fraud in the Khanum military, is dispatched to the scene of an unnatural death at the estate of the Haza clan, one of the wealthiest in the land, who mysteriously maintain a house out in the sticks. Commander Taqtasa Blas was found in a guest bedroom with some leafy trees sprouting through his body. Blas, a friend of the Hazas, had a reputation for harassing the estate’s female staff. Kol uses magic fluid to “engrave” the crime scene, impressing every detail on his mind to relate to his superior. Dolabra is intrigued by the apparently supernatural killing and sets about using her superior deductive skills to identify the killer. The worldbuilding is immediately involving, Bennett’s take on a classic detective duo dynamic feels fresh and exciting, and the mystery itself twists and turns delightfully. Readers will be wowed. Agent: Cameron McClure, Donald Maass Literary. (Feb.)