> WHODUNIT JACK BATTEN
Clark and Division
By Naomi Hirahara
Soho Crime, 312 pages, $35.95
It’s 1944 in California. The U.S. is fighting Japan in the Pacific, and the family of Aki Ito have been ripped out of their California home, interned in a camp, then shipped to Chicago to fend for themselves. Aki is
20 years old, American-born, the daughter of parents who have settled in America from Japan. In Chicago, an older Ito daughter dies under a subway train, a suicide as far as the indifferent local cops are concerned. Aki sets out to uncover the real story behind her sister’s death, sleuthing in an engaging Nancy Drew fashion. The crime-solving is absorbing, but the novel works more compellingly as an informed portrayal of life in crisis among a group of American citizens who learned the hard way that, in certain circumstances, democracy doesn’t apply to them.
10 Days
By Jule Selbo Pandamoon, 331 pages, $27.99
Life couldn’t be tougher for Dee Rommel. She’s a cop in Portland, Maine, with a work injury so severe she now needs to wear a prosthesis on one leg. During rehab, bitter and chippy, she takes on private investigations. One case involves the search for the missing daughter of a local multimillionaire and another case turns on the rape of one of Rommel’s close friends. Dee shows herself to be nervy and relentless in her investigative role. She can also be a pain in the neck, both to the other characters in the book and to the reader. Will this woman never take the sensible option? In the end, Dee carries the day and even if stretches of the novel err on the wordy side, it becomes absolutely necessary to hang in for the grand finale.
Did I Say You Could Go
By Melanie Gideon
Simon & Schuster, 268 pages, $22.99
Nobody has thoughts of homicide in this vastly entertaining book, much less carries out a murderous deed. But inflicting heavy-duty psychological damage? The book’s rampant with that. The question forever on the reader’s mind is the identity of the person with the most lethal intent. The plot, which never stops moving, features four major characters who alternate in relating the narrative: two pairs of single mothers and 15-year-old daughters in a well-to-do community in California’s Bay Area. One mom is filthy rich; the other needs a job. The second mom can’t afford to turn down extravagant gifts from Ms Rich B--ch. The story, much of it conveyed through the dark magic of Instagram, VPNs and other pieces of laptop action, leads to various pieces of ugliness for assorted other characters. But when it comes to the crushing events at the book’s breathtaking climax, the mysteries pile up in a series of full-on collisions.
The Basel Killings
By Hansjorg Schneider Bitter Lemon Press, 268 pages, $23.95
Police Inspector Peter Hunkeler of the Swiss city of Basel could never hold down a job on the police forces of any American or British metropolitan centre. He passes too much time savouring meals, sampling the attractions of local sex workers and chewing the fat with everyone else. On the other hand, he has endless patience and he doesn’t mind taking an unorthodox approach to his sleuthing. He has two murders on his hands in the first book of what promises to be a weirdly entertaining series. Both victims have been strangled, a sex worker and an elderly vagabond. The senior cops figure Albanian drug smugglers are involved. Hunkeler begs to differ. Things grow murky. Murk plays a major role in the book’s odd appeal.
Jack Batten is a Toronto-based writer and a