No One Will Miss Her by Kat Rosenfield

William Morrow, 304 pages, $27.99

“No One Will Miss Her” has been nominated for an Edgar Award.

This book would have been massively better (and more surprising) had I not read the inner flap description. As it was, given the glaring hint, I figured out whodunnit after the first chapter. Be that as it may, I soldiered on.

A body is discovered in a rental cabin in a rural community in Maine. Although her face has been blown off by a shotgun, there is no doubt among the male police officers present that the victim was Lizzie Ouellette. Why are they so certain? There is a quite visible mole on one of her breasts. Lizzie had "a reputation." Never mind she had a husband, Dwayne Cleaves — where is he, by the way? Bingo, case solved. Dwayne killed Lizzie.

It is disconcerting to discover that many of the chapters are written in the first person by Lizzie, à la “The Lovely Bones.” Through her narrative we discover what a painful childhood she had as she got older. Her father was a loving man who tried his best. When they were poor, he shot squirrels for dinner. Lizzie thought it was a treat. But he couldn’t protect her from the school bullies who called her “trash,” mostly because that was her father’s business, tending a trash heap. Kids are cruel. Then those kids grow up and find other ways to show their cruelty.

The local police think they’ve sewn up the case, but along comes hotshot Maine criminal investigator, Ian Bird. He starts poking his nose into things and looks hard at the last occupants of the rental cabin, Adrienne and Ethan Richards, from Boston. Ethan is a disgraced investment banker who lost gazillions of dollars in investors’ money. He is lucky he is not in jail. In fact, he is so lucky to still have massive quantities of assets still available to him. Adrienne preens for Instagram and Facebook and her tens of loyal followers. It sucks to be married to a criminal. Ethan is a non-entity but Adrienne has some hidden depths.

Readers only have to wait until halfway through the book for the plot to begin its twisty churn towards the end.

Kat Rosenfield is a competent writer. Although her locals sound brutish, they also sound very human in their nastiness. Poor Lizzie.

Under Lock and Skeleton Key by Gigi Pandian

Minotaur Books, 352 pages, $26.99

I had been reading a lot of dour, serious books, most of which got eliminated after about twenty pages, when I first picked up “Under Lock and Skeleton Key.” I read a few pages and my first thought was, this is too light. So I put it down. But over the next few days, I found myself thinking about how Gigi Pandian’s book had a lot of intriguing elements in it. The tone was clean-cut and throw-back. There were shades of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys — although I am a die-hard Brains Benton fan — and I renamed Pandian’s book, “The Mystery of the Lock and Skeleton Key.”

What were those intriguing elements? Tempest Raj, the protagonist, is a defrocked magician. Something went wrong with her high-powered Las Vegas act, and she was left to skulk back to her family’s compound in Northern California, in a town named Hidden Creek. She is of mixed heritage; her grandfather came from India and her grandmother from Scotland. Her parents were just as quirkily matched, “What happens when a carpenter and a stage magician fall in love? They form a Secret Staircase Construction business to bring magic to people through their homes.”

There is a family legend/curse that the oldest child of the Raj family dies prematurely. Of the more recent generations, the victims have included her grandfather Ashok’s older brother and her mother’s older sister. And in defiance of the oldest child rule, Tempest’s mother also died in a suspicious manner a few years before “Under Lock” begins.

(An early P.S.: I commend Gigi Pandian for managing flashback information without indulging in convoluted, confusing chapters of flashbacks.)

(Another P.S.: There are many magicians in this book, but if you are looking for revelations, or even major descriptions, of magic secrets, you can move along. But then you’d be missing a really great book.)

Not only is twenty-six-year-old Tempest out of work and motherless, but a few years back she managed to scuff up the relationship with her best friend from public school days. Fortunately, Ivy, the ex-best friend, works for Darius, Tempest’s father, so can't help but meet occasionally. Darius still owns the small company specializing in constructing hidden rooms, secret staircases, trompe l’oeil, and other architectural illusions. Darius was the person who brought the stories of Emma, Tempest’s mother, to life. The company was in demand at the start. But not so much lately. The stories died when Emma died. And the customers liked stories.

Needless to say, the family compound is a treasure trove of architectural misdirection. There are secret “keys” to access rooms in the house. It’s not just the stereotypical pulling on a book on a bookshelf to activate a hidden door; there are hidden buttons and keyholes, including panels with secret triggers and floors with switches. Tempest lives in the tower (accessed by a secret staircase, natch). It is while she is alone in the tower that she begins to hear a fiddle being played. It is playing a tune Tempest’s mother used to play. No one else has heard the ghostly, midnight serenade. Is Tempest out of work, humiliated in the magicians’ world, AND going crazy?

Then a body appears lodged in a space where it could not possibly have been lodged. The body appears in the house of a customer for whom Darius is remodeling a kitchen pantry. The owner of the house has no connection to the Raj family, but the body has a definite connection to Tempest. What is going on?

The delight of this book is also in the many characters Pandian introduces. Besides Ivy, Tempest’s friend and fellow magician, Sanjay, surfaces to help. Some of the people in the construction company are almost like family. Ashok and Morag moved to California to be with Tempest’s family, and in his retirement, Ashok has taken to cooking with much gusto. Some of his Indian-Scottish dishes are at the center of the family's feasts for friends.

Although the full extent of what happened to Tempest during her magic act in Las Vegas is not revealed for quite a while, the incident  almost killed her. Plus, there may be multiple lawsuits stemming from it. Plus, her contract with the venue hosting her act was terminated. Plus, she lost whatever money she had settling debts.

Life is grim at the moment for Tempest. The haunting music adds to her unease. The dead body is the capper. If it weren’t for her friends and family supporting her, Tempest would more than likely have curled into a ball in a corner and stayed there. (Not really, because she’s not that kind of heroine.)

In the best tradition of childhood mysteries — although I think this is meant to be an adult book — the protagonist is plucky, intelligent, intuitive, and intrepid. Many, many things are unexpected. I love the idea of hidden rooms. I love the idea of Indian-Scottish food. I love the ideas of truth, justice, and family mystery. I didn’t even need the stuff I usually complain about books not having: People needing to be people -- sleep? bathroom facilities? teeth-brushing? shower? At least there’s a lot of eating.

MBTB "Rx": This is a cozy that actually makes you feel better. 

Suburban Dicks by Fabian Nicieza

G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 400 pages, $27 (c2021)

According to the author’s bio on the back flap of the book, Fabian Nicieza “is an Argentine American comic book writer and editor who is best known as the co-creator of Marvel’s Deadpool and for his work on titles such as X-Men, X-Force, New Warriors, Cable, and Thunderbolts.”

So you know the book is going to be funny, right.

One of Nicieza’s main characters is Andrea Stern, who spends most of the book looking like a beach ball with feet, i.e., she’s pregnant, with her fifth child. The other main character is Kenneth Lee, a reporter who ran afoul of ethics considerations, i.e., he crossed the line and made up a quote on a major story. This book is about coming back from being knocked back for the protagonists and about being haunted and shackled by the past for the antagonists.

Andrea had a bright future ahead of her. She was gearing up to become an FBI profiler after helping to solve a major case while still in college. Then she got pregnant. The father of her child was set to make oodles of money on Wall Street, so Andrea put her dreams on hold. She married Jeff and they proceeded to bounce out a bunch of children. Some of them might be named Sadie and Sarah, and Eli, and … um, there’s another one. I’ll think on it. Another is definitely on the way. At the beginning of the book, Andrea is seven months pregnant, but maybe she miscounted the months because she looks as though she might burst. (Insert your own ripe fruit simile here.)

Unfortunately, Jeff cheats, not with other women but from his clients. He “appropriated” funds, got caught, and is on probation. The family has downsized from a McMansion to (still a pretty big) house. They live in the suburbs. Jeff commutes by train. There is only one car. At 6:30 or so every morning the whole family drives him to the train station. Then, because it is summer, there are activities, friends, pool time, kids running wild. Not so secretly, Andrea is bored and disgruntled. 

Here’s an excerpt about Jeff:

They had brought their furniture over from the old house even though Jeff had wanted to buy all-new stuff. He continued to act like the money would last forever even when so much of it had been lost.

Not lost, since that implied an accidental misplacement. Squandered. Stolen, Litigated. Adjudicated. Reimbursed to the clients he had cheated. Paid to the IRS to avoid going to prison. Any and all of those better defined where the money had gone as a result of Jeff’s transgressions.

Kenneth Lee is a couple of years younger than Andrea and knew her in high school. He had a crush on her. She had a crush on his older brother. Kenneth is living out his disgrace at a small town paper in New Jersey and hoping for a big story that will send him back to the big leagues. However, he still carries the character defects that landed him in purgatory to begin with: arrogance and the ability to piss off just about anyone, especially his mother, Blaine (aka Huiquing, but “Blaine” looked better for the purposes of selling real estate). Huiquing lives in a retirement facility, where she is one of the youngest residents. This fact proves useful later in the book. Meanwhile, it provides great fodder for humor and a touch of humanity.

What brings Andrea and Kenneth together again after many years is the murder of a gas station attendant. As the story begins, Andrea stumbles across the crime scene shortly after two patrol officers arrive. Her youngest child needs to pee. One of the officers will not let Andrea use the restroom, so the toddler, unable to hold it, pees all over the crime scene. While, ahem, events are unraveling, Andrea gets a good look at the scene. In rapid fire language, Andrea tells Officer Wu (daughter of the mayor) how she and the other officer mishandled the crime scene. Them she drives off.

The official line is that the victim, Satkunananthan Sasmal, was killed in a robbery. Andrea knows that couldn’t possibly be true. She can’t help it; she’s hooked. She starts her own investigation, sometimes dragging one or more children with her, . When she combines forces with Kenneth, they make the most of their irregular resources: retired people, housewives, the tight-knit Indian community, a friend at the FBI. The FBI friend is Ramon. If Andrea hadn’t gotten pregnant, she would have broken up with Jeff and run off with Ramon. They met during the case that made Andrea famous. But that was then and this is now, and she hasn't seen Ramon since then. Neither she nor Kenneth have very weighty credentials to be investigating the crime and trying to uncover malfeasance in the community government. But they persevere.

“Suburban Dicks” is a worthy tale. The plot line becomes more serious as the investigation digs deeper. Might be worth a hankie or two. It certainly is worth an MBTB star or two!

MBTB star!

Ah, Ruth — that’s the name of Andrea’s judgmental oldest child. I think she’s a rising star at the age of nine.

Murder at the Mena House by Erica Ruth Neubauer

Kensington, 304 pages, $15.95 (c2021)

Erica Ruth Neubauer has a new book coming out soon, part of her series starring young American widow, Jane Wunderly ("Danger on the Atlantic"). The books are set in the Roaring Twenties and the covers are quite charming. I thought I would begin with her first book in the series, "Murder at the Mena House." The setting was Cairo, Egypt. The characters were pretty much limited to the grounds of the famous Mena House resort. I was in the mood for an Agatha Christie-like mystery: dead body, sleuth, exotic setting, soupçon of romance, antiquities, Art Deco!

Alas, one should never take an author's template and slap it on another author's book. "Murder at the Mena House" was pleasant, but I lost a firm grip on who the heroine was. Was she plucky, traumatized, intrepid, or foolhardy? Also, she had a lot of adrenaline bursts.

The series has caught the fancy of quite a few readers and I find no fault with the setting. Perhaps this is just the mystery you need to cozy up to.