The titular support group of 2024’s Assassins Anonymous operates similarly to Alcoholics Anonymous: Recovering assassins help one another avoid relapsing into killing mode. Rob Hart’s follow-up to that globe-trotting adventure, Three Hitmen and a Baby, chronicles a week or so in the lives of recovering assassins, each chapter related in the first person by a different member of the group. When Valencia receives an emergency summons out of state, the others step up to take care of her child, a toddler named Lucia. Inconveniently, a Russian mob boss turns up immediately afterward to blackmailAssassins Anonymous’ hero, Mark, into assassinating yet a third group participant. And then, as young children are known to do, Lucia suffers a bout of high fever, necessitating a hospital visit. Since her temporary caregivers belong to an anonymous group, they don’t even know the child’s surname. Cue the nurse to call the cops. And now, the one-time assassins and their young charge must navigate distinctly perilous territory, with both the police and the Russian mob in hot pursuit. High tension? Yep. Funny? Yep, that too. Heartwarming? Without a doubt. Oh, and a major twist in the final pages. What more can you ask for from a mystery?
She Walks at Night
Picture a Japanese detective, Kosuke Kindaichi, somewhat disheveled, but brilliant in his crime solving abilities and amusingly ironic in his observations. If the image that springs to mind is an Asian version of Peter Falk’s iconic Lt. Columbo, you are on the right track. He shows up rather late in the narrative of Seishi Yokomizo’s She Walks at Night, well after the murders and the beheadings. Yes, beheadings, plural. The title refers to a young woman “of good family” who is plagued with sleepwalking. She does not remember what took place during her periods of somnambulation, but when one of the aforementioned murders takes place in the middle of the night at the family mansion, she seems to be a lock for the perpetrator. The first-person narrator of the story, Yashiro Torata, is, by his own admission, a failed mystery writer, and yet the family looks to him for some clarity about the murder. No such clarity is forthcoming. Enter Kosuke Kindaichi, who will ask some leading questions, make some inferences and expeditiously solve the case, as he did in 76 other mysteries by Yokomizo. Originally published in 1948, She Walks at Night is the latest of eight Yokomizo titles translated into English. Only 68 more left to go!
An Artful Dodge
Set in Victorian London, Karen Odden’s An Artful Dodge spins an intricate tale of deceit, extortion and revenge, suggesting that the old bromide about “honor among thieves” is not always applicable. Kit Jimeson is an experienced member of an all-female gang of thieves. Life is good until a hostile takeover engineered by the daughter of the gang’s founder, imprisoned many years before, but now back with a mountainous chip on her shoulder. Her immediate priority is exacting revenge on the London jeweler whose testimony consigned her to prison, and she will leave nothing to chance. If that means sacrificing the freedom or even the life of one of her gang members—Kit Jimeson, for example—then so be it. Kit is understandably reluctant to take part in this endeavor until she discovers that some rather unsavory characters are holding her sister hostage to ensure Kit’s participation. An Artful Dodge is a heist novel par excellence. Though primarily plot-driven, it’s done so with a cast of characters who are compelling, relatable and oh-so-skilled at subterfuge (plus, in one notable case, subterranean-fuge in a London tunnel).
Based on a True Story
In Sarah Vaughan’s latest psychological thriller, Based on a True Story, you don’t have to wait long to discover the crime that is the centerpiece of the novel: A dead body is found in the first sentence. The setting is a seaside estate in Cornwall, arguably the number one English locale for moody and atmospheric murder mysteries ever since the prewar days of Daphne du Maurier and Agatha Christie. The pivotal character in the book, Dame Eleanor Kingman, is a renowned children’s author who has sold some 40 million books. She has built her brand around warmhearted stories of a mother fox and her cubs, and now some devious extortionist seems bent on bringing her down, just as a film crew is setting up cameras for a documentary about Eleanor’s life. For her 70th birthday celebration, Eleanor has surrounded herself with friends, family, colleagues and old adversaries, virtually everyone she can think of who might be the blackmailer, hoping to identify and neutralize the threat before it metastasizes. To be fair, Eleanor is difficult, to say the least, so the list of suspects is long. Very long. Though she is not the only character deemed so. Likability is in short supply in Eleanor’s circle. All that said, Based on a True Story is beautifully written and wickedly Gatsby-esque in its depiction of the rich and famous. The novel is a page turner of the first order.