The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 368 pages, $16 (c2018)

Not a true mystery novel.

Would you want to know the date of your death, especially if you were very young? The four Gold children – Varya, Daniel, Klara, and Simon – pool their money and go to a fortune teller to hear when they will die. Before any of them have a chance to really live, they are already thinking of their deaths. After they hear the old woman prophesy, they soberly return home. None tell the others what they learned.

Then author Chloe Benjamin moves her novel forward in four parts, one for each of the children. A few years later, after their father has died unexpectedly young, we learn that Simon is prophesized to be the first to die. But will he? With the thought in mind that he may not have many years at all, he leaves school at about 15 years of age and runs away to San Francisco with Klara. Klara, about 17, has also decided she must begin her life as soon as possible. They leave the rest of the Golds back in New York City, older siblings Daniel and Varya and their mother, Gertie. The fortune teller has also doomed Klara to die young.

Strangely, although the premise is chilling, the thought behind the novel is very plain and elegant. What do you do if you believe you are at the mercy of fate? How do you live your life? Do you huddle in a corner and then laugh when the due date comes and goes. Then do you begin to live? What about those wasted years you spent huddled in that corner?

Similar scenarios have played out in many books, most of them science fiction, over the years. What about a nuclear apocalypse? A giant earthquake? A comet traveling to collide with Earth? But here is a book that asks what if instead of months or minutes, thought of your death loomed over you for years?

There are some strange events. They could be supernatural. On the other hand, they could be just lapses in attention, memory, analysis. Benjamin does not give you easy answers as each section unfolds.

We are left with a magic trick at the end. A cascade of nested cups lifts, one after the other, and what, we wonder, will lie at its center.

The way Benjamin writes each character’s yearning, fears, wonder, and love is worth reading.

The Girl from Widow Hills by Megan Miranda

Simon & Schuster, 336 pages, $26.99

Arden Maynor was six years old when she disappeared one night. Her mother frantically called 911. Arden’s shoe was caught in a storm drain. There was a huge rainstorm and the thought was that Arden had been swept away by the water into the drain. Her mother relentlessly urged people to keep looking for her, even though there was little hope for her survival. But, indeed, Sean Coleman, a 32-year-old father who had volunteered to help look, saw Arden’s little hand clutching onto another drain cover. He held onto her until a way could be cut into the pipe to save her. She became a miracle child.

In the real world, children miraculously saved from dire situations have dotted the news over the years. The media picks up anniversary stories of those children and their families. We viewers share in the victories and glow in the reflected happiness of the lives now lived in full. Those children and families belong to us, too, by virtue of our thoughts and prayers.

Don’t they?

Olivia Meyer is twenty-six years old and works in hospital administration in Central Valley. Her best friends are nurses Bennett and Elyse. She owns her own home on a remote street. Her closest next door neighbor sold her the house. He’s old and seems kindly. He watches out for her and she gets him groceries.

Everything is going well. She is trying to extricate herself from a toxic relationship and seems to be succeeding. She has distanced herself from her toxic past. A phone call provides the conclusive touch: Her mother has died. A box of mishmashed things arrives as her last possessions. 

Then one night, Olivia’s worst nightmare occurs. Only it’s not a nightmare. She was sleepwalking, something she hadn’t done since she was a child, and tripped over a dead body in her front yard. Worse, with the arrival of the police, she realizes she knows the victim. He is Sean Coleman, her savior when she had another name, another life in Widow Hills far away. She had not seen or heard from him in the twenty years since. Why was he in her front yard late at night? Who killed him? Did she?

This is another thriller by author Megan Miranda (“The Last House Guest”). Olivia’s is the only viewpoint. Everyone else is suspect. Trust no one. No, wait, maybe trust him. Nah, he’s too angry. How about her? All of a sudden she’s too flaky. What about the handsome man who suddenly appears in town? Her former boyfriend? Nina, the cop who hates her neighbor, the old man? Yeah, what about the old man, hmm? He has a lot of guns.

There’s a TV movie in there somewhere, and it will be just as entertaining.

G. I. Confidential by Martin Limón

Soho Crime, 384 pages, $26.95

There are very few series which have gotten better along the way. The George Sueño and Ernie Bascom series set in 1970s Korea is one of the winners. Sueño and Bascom are CID investigators with an Army base outside of Seoul. “G. I. Confidential” is Martin Limón’s fourteenth book in the series, and he is still going strong.

Korea in the 1970s has no K-pop. It does have a dictatorship, however. There are no trendy Korean BBQs, except in Korea. And those are not trendy; they just are. There are no Kia cars in the U.S., but there are kimchi cabs in Seoul.

On average during the 1970s, there were about 40,000 soldiers stationed in South Korea. They ostensibly were keeping the peace between North and South Korea at the DMZ. The U.S. was also supporting a dictator, Park Chung-hee, who would rule with an iron fist until (spoiler alert) his assassination in 1979. However, at the time of “G. I. Confidential,” Park is very much alive.

Tensions with North Korea are high. The U.S. walks on eggshells to manage and/or sidestep the turbulent internal South Korean politics, and to run its own part of the DMZ. Into the reality of South Korea at the time (a nebulous sometime in the 1970s), Limón inserts his own dramatic inventions. 

Non-Koreans are robbing banks in Seoul. The descriptions given by witnesses of the first robbery identify the men as U. S. soldiers. They are carrying military weapons. They are driving a military vehicle — with identifying marks taped up. In the second robbery, someone is killed with a bullet. Although Sueño and Bascom were not originally assigned the robberies, they take the cases upon themselves — because the CID originally assigned idiots to investigate.

Sueño and Bascom have to consult with their scary friend, Mr. Kill of the Korean police. He speaks impeccable English, knows everybody, and hears everything almost before it happens. But Mr. Kill is hampered in solving the bank robberies because he is not American. The three investigators have a strong alliance developed over several books. There is no doubt the robbers will be caught. However.

Complicating matters is a case that seems to be about a relatively trivial matter, but looks are deceiving. A photograph has appeared in the alternate newspaper, the trashy “Overseas Observer.” That is, it is the alternative to the “The Stars and Stripes,” the official U.S. military newspaper. (As a sidenote, author Limón worked for “The Stars and Stripes” in Korea during the 70s.) The photo is of Caucasian women in a U. S. military truck, with the caption that they are being taken north to the ROK (Republic of Korea) headquarters at the DMZ for “entertainment.” Blustery head honchos want Sueño and Bascom to put a damper on the story before the news gets out stateside.

When Sueño and Bascom journey north, they discover a greater mystery than women being trucked up north. There is a subtle but definite tension between the ROK commander and the U.S. commander at the DMZ. Also, it is rumored the U. S. commander, Lt. General Abner Jennings Crabtree, has a few screws loose, and the only thing saving his bacon is his assistant, Screech Owl Tapia. There are rumors the ROK commander, Major General Bok Jung-nam, has a few lose screws himself. The only thing keeping him from exploding apparently is a mysterious woman, Estrella. Was she one of the women in the truck? Why does Crabtree seem to know her?

And who the heck is Katie Byrd Worthington and why is she sticking her nose into everything?

It turns out Katie Byrd Worthington is responsible for a lot of the scandalous material being published in the “Overseas Observer.” She is its reporter in Korea, and she already has given Sueño and Bascom publicity (of the bad sort) over the first bank robbery. She also has connections. She also has the goods on our heroes. She also helps them some. She is inescapable.

Add a killer to the general chaos. Someone is trying to kill either Sueño or Bascom, or both, or maybe Katie Byrd Worthington. There are a lot of things to keep the investigators and an intrepid reporter awake at night.

This is a tremendous mix of story elements, including one carry-over item from the other books. The story builds to a crescendo in which bombs boom and rifles erupt, an honest-to-goodness military engagement. You can’t get any more crescendo-y than that! The end story was so convincing that I had to Google some of the characters involved. It turns out the events at the end are just fiction, but wowee-wow-wow, what a stunner.

Gomapsumnida, Mr. Limón! MBTB stars and stripes for “G. I. Confidential”!

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

William Morrow, 320 pages, $27.99

If you read my last “review,” you will know I was discouraged by yet another book about the bringing together —on an isolated island in a storm — of people with deep secrets from their youth. I did not finish that book. It is the exquisite nature of literary randomness that the next book I picked was about people with dark secrets from their past getting together — on an isolated island in a storm. But this time I finished the book.

Will Slater and Julia Keegan are getting married. They are successful people in their early thirties who look good together, have much in common, and are madly in love. Julia is a perfectionist so it is a miracle she found someone of whom she approves. They are enough into their individual lives that they can just enjoy the future together. Ruggedly handsome Will stars in a man-in-the-wllderness-against-the-elements reality television show. Julia has a trendy online style magazine.

For their wedding, they draw together their families and close friends to celebrate. From Will’s exclusive prep school come a bunch of rabble-rousers and from uni, his rugby mates. On Julia’s side are her fragile and beautiful younger half-sister, Julia’s neglectful mother and even more neglectful father, and her best friend, a man, Charlie. Will’s family are no more adoring or adorable than Julia’s; his father was the headmaster of Will's prestigious prep school.

While it is a celebration of Will and Julia’s wedding, it is also an opportunity for Charlie and his wife, Hannah, to rekindle the flame that has been dampened over the years by their two children. Only Julia pretty much spirits Charlie off for gossip and reminiscences right from the start.

The prep school mates are boisterous and border on being rude. Johnno, Will’s best man, also is one of the group. He has been the least successful of all the school chums. He is more unkempt and unfit than the others, with a brittle unhappiness.

Well, doesn’t this sound like a merry group?

Lucy Foley builds up the tension expertly. With chapters going back and forth throughout the weekend’s activities and through the viewpoints of several of the characters, she slowly introduces all the sad and sordid tales from the past. In the end, there is a body. In the end, there is a murderer. But that’s only in the end. The journey there is intense.

I didn’t think I wanted to take on this “reunion” tale after the last foray, but I’m glad I hung in there. I don’t think I had a choice. Lucy Foley saw to that.