Cold comfort

Richard Lipez sifts through new thrillers and mysteries meant to divert our attention from the winter blues. These five made the cut.

Before She Disappeared Lisa Gardner

Frankie Elkin is “an average, middle-aged white woman ... with more regrets than belongings.” Nine years sober, she's an oddly appealing, well-meaning screwball. Frankie decides to put her obsessive tendencies to good use: She joins a group of ordinary people who try to solve cold missing-person cases. The book centres on Frankie's search for a Haitian teen from a rough neighbourhood in Boston, a case that puts Frankie's life at risk. In this rare standalone, the prolific Gardner has come up with one of the most original characters in recent crime fiction.

Bone Canyon

Lee Goldberg

Goldberg's lean sequel to Lost Hills has homicide detective Eve Ronin investigating rapes and murders that likely were committed by rogue deputies in her own department. The other cops hate Ronin for exposing the rats on the force and because TV series producers chase her around waving contracts. A survivor of a messy childhood, Ronin wants only a sense of balance in her life. All this happens in the wake of raging wildfires, grounding the story in (stark) reality.

Girl A

Abigail Dean

The pandemic might not be the ideal time to read a novel about six English children held captive and abused by their deranged parents. But put your fears aside or you'll miss out on a stunning debut. The compelling narrator is one of those captive children, Lex, who, at 15, escaped and freed her siblings. Lex and her sister Evie remain haunted by the years when they found solace in a book of Greek tragedies that “made us feel better about our own family.” Now a successful lawyer, Lex prepares for a fraught family reunion.

The House on Vesper Sands Paraic O'Donnell

In this charming jape, Inspector Henry Cutter is known around New Scotland Yard for having “a weakness for certain exotic cases.” In the snowy winter of 1893, he's drawn into a doozy when young employed women around London start to vanish, or have their souls stolen by ruthless spiritualists. O'Donnell, a kind of Oscar Wilde gone tipsy, drops some Irish whimsy into the harsh reality of Victorian England.

Sleep Well, My Lady

Kwei Quartey

About to strangle an icon of the Ghanaian fashion industry, the killer in the second Emma Djan PI novel takes a moment to muse that the R&B music playing in the victim's bedroom is “a tasteful choice.” It's the kind of revealing character detail that the Ghanaian American Quartey specializes in. The sweetly crafty Emma is the main attraction here, but her colleagues at the Sowah detective agency are also a companionable bunch in this beautifully crafted tale.