Four new mysteries to cozy up with this winter
Charles Finch reviews four very different volumes, united by strong doses of suspense: a former O.J. prosecutor’s murder mystery, a Spanish noir, an anthology of stories populated by heavyweight writers, and a vineyard cozy.
In Sunlight or In Shadow: Stories Inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper
Edited by Lawrence Block
Pegasus, 288 pp.
**** out of four stars
This absolutely superb anthology starts out with two advantages: a true legend at the helm in crime writer Lawrence Block, and a fascinating concept. If you know only one picture by Edward Hopper, it’s likely Nighthawks, his 1942 depiction of the lonely inhabitants of a café late at night. But most of his paintings share its tone of melancholy and mystery, and so do the stories they’ve inspired in this collection, many of which are set during the Depression. Block’s clout has enticed some huge stars to contribute — Stephen King, Lee Child, Joyce Carol Oates — and each offers a splendid entry based on one of Hopper’s works. But every story is superlative, from a poignant and beautiful ghost tale by Warren Moore to Block’s own slyly exquisite miniature about a solitary woman at an automat, nursing her coffee. Hopper, America’s great mournful lyric realist, deserves a tribute of this grace and sensitivity.
The Champagne Conspiracy
By Ellen Crosby
Minotaur, 368 pp.
*** stars
The cozy mystery often gets tagged as lightweight, when in fact the best cozies frequently are about the redemption we find in community and friendship, a serious subject indeed. In The Champagne Conspiracy, her charming, funny seventh novel set in Virginia’s wine country — I didn’t know it was there either — Ellen Crosby has written a superior cozy, narrated by winemaker Lucie Montgomery. She has two mysteries to solve, when she’s not contemplating tannins — a death, potentially a murder, in a family friend’s retirement community, and the murky history of one of her employee’s grandparents. Coming deep in the series, The Champagne Conspiracy can feel a bit crowded for newcomers, and it’s guilty here and there of the Stepford sunniness of its genre. But it has tight plotlines, and in Lucie a winning heroine, her personal troubles ameliorated by the acceptance of an endearing circle of friends.
Moral Defense
By Marcia Clark
Thomas & Mercer, 416 pp.
**½ stars
Early in Moral Defense, Samantha Brinkman meets another lawyer — “a former prosecutor who’d recently come to his senses and joined me on the right side of justice: criminal defense.” It’s a funny line for Marcia Clark to write, given that she’s probably the most famous former prosecutor alive. All over our screens recently in both fictional and factual portrayals, Clark, who famously tried the O.J. Simpson murder case, has created in Samantha her antipode, a plucky Mickey Haller-type willing to do anything in defense of her clients. Foremost among these is a teenage girl whose entire family has been murdered. Clark is a weak writer — the characters and dialogue are amateurish — but when her instincts for legal drama kick in Moral Defense becomes absorbing, often adept and smart. And there’s a certain voyeuristic grip in watching this famous figure cross the courtroom — fictionally, at least.
Thus Bad Begins
By Javier Marias
Knopf, 444 pp.
***½ stars
Javier Marias is the real deal. His new book, Thus Bad Begins, is a stunning successor to his widely lauded 2013 novel The Infatuations, both written in his 60, with the freedom and expansiveness that novelists sometimes suddenly attain at that age. This novel, set in Madrid in the early 1980s, is about the troubled marriage of a filmmaker and his wife. Narrated by the filmmaker’s ingenuous young assistant, it slowly but inexorably moves from innocence toward heartbreak. Marias has a knack for suspense without trickery, and a mesmerizing way of second-guessing his own assumptions, probing further and further into the meaning of his characters’ seemingly insignificant actions. As a literary mystery, Thus Bad Begins calls to mind Paul Auster, Donna Tartt and Carlos Ruiz Zafón; purely as literature, it feels like an heir to the searching human nuance of the novels of Gabriel García Márquez.
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Charles Finch is the author of the Charles Lenox mystery series. The latest is The Inheritance.