Swan Song

A burned down mansion and a missing young woman permeate the riveting finale of Elin Hilderbrand’s glitzy Nantucket series of novels.

With high drama and a boatload of mystery, Elin Hilderbrand (The Five Star Weekend, Golden Girl, The Perfect Couple) reels in the stunning final installment in her Nantucket-based series of novels. Readers will savor Swan Song, as it nostalgically brings back characters from former books and adds a host of dynamic new ones.

 

When enigmatic, middle-aged, island newcomers, Bull and Leslee Richardson--a “hot commodity” power couple--purchase a lavish, 22-million-dollar oceanfront property, they enlist the help of Colleen “Coco” Coyle, an aspiring screenwriter in need of a job. Coco serves as their “personal concierge,” assisting their quest to integrate into island society culture. Coco is befriended by Kacy—a dedicated nurse from California who recently broke up with her girlfriend. She returns home to visit her Police Chief father, Ed Kapenash, who has suffered some health challenges and is now facing retirement.

 

When the Richardson mansion mysteriously burns down and Coco goes missing on the same day, many questions are suddenly raised. A police investigation coupled with town intrigue slowly starts to reveal the true identity of the Richardsons and their modus operandi. In doing so, spicy details are also revealed regarding those in their orbit. This includes socially connected friends, a real estate agent, an architect, a boat captain, sommelier, a masseuse and others.

 

Romance and island glitz infuse Hilderbrand’s spellbinding 30^th novel that packs a juicy, suspenseful wallop for devoted readers of her last 29 books and rare latecomers to the captivating Hilderbrand ‘brand.’

 

Swan Song by Elin Hilderbrand

Little, Brown and Company / Hachette Book Group, $30.00 hardcover, 9780316258876, 384 pages

Publishing Date: June 11, 2024

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (July 5, 2024), link HERE 

Mrs. Plansky's Revenge

A fresh, dynamic cozy mystery where a strong, likable 71-year-old Florida widow is scammed of her life savings and sets off on a quest for justice.

Spencer Quinn is the author of the fun and wildly successful Chet and Bernie mysteries, a long-running series that features a talking dog and his human, crime-solving, private-eye partner. In Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge, Quinn launches a fresh, new dynamic series featuring an aging heroine who becomes embroiled in an exciting, adventurous mystery.  

Recent widow, Mrs. Loretta Plansky, is discerning and spry; a 71-year-old tennis-player. She and her husband, Norm, were a sophisticated couple who made millions with their unlikely invention of a “toaster knife,” a knife that actually toasts bread while you slice it. In order to retire, Loretta and Norm, parents of two adult children, sold the business with high hopes of living a leisurely Florida lifestyle of ease and comfort. However, things didn’t quite go according to plan. Norm died, and then Mrs. Plansky, hip replaced, decided to downsize. She moved from their large home into a new residence, an “itty-bitty” condo on Little Pine Lake—situated only a few miles from keeping tabs on her pesky, temperamental, 98-year-old father, who resides in an upscale assisted living community. Mrs. Plansky’s children and grandchildren don’t live nearby, but they climb out of the woodwork, gracious and attentive as can be when they need something—mainly money. 

When tired and spent Mrs. Plansky receives a frantic, distressing phone call from someone whom she believes is her grandson--he needs $10,000 to post bail for a DUI arrest--she gives him what he asks for without question. Mrs. Plansky later learns, however, the call was a fraud perpetrated by overseas criminals who proceeded to wipe out her entire nest egg. When the police and FBI conclude they don’t have enough evidence to solve the whodunnit, Mrs. Plansky becomes intent on taking charge and seeking justice. 

Quinn’s (Bark to the Future, Of Mutts and Men) briskly plotted nail-biter takes unexpected twists and turns nicely balanced by Mrs. Plansky turning to the ghost of her husband. He serves as a silent, tender touchstone empowering her amidst a courageous, complicated quest for retribution. Fearless Mrs.Plansky barrels past her comfort zone and the limitations of her years, setting off to Romania where she plunges head-long into danger. Her age never becomes a detriment. Rather, she works it to her advantage, employing great ingenuity to solve a crime that elevates her into an immensely likeable, wholly appealing heroine.

 

Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge by Spencer Quinn

Forge Books, $26.99 hardcover, 304 pages, 9781250843333

Publishing Date: July 25, 2023

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different from) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (June 5, 2023), link HERE

A shortened version of this review was published on Shelf Awareness for Readers (July 28, 2023). Link HERE to read that review.

 

Laughing Can Kill You

Maggie King’s astute cozy-mystery protagonist Hazel Rose of Richmond, Virginia, is thrust front and center in a murder investigation that puts her own life in jeopardy. 

Hazel Rose is a computer-programmer-turned-romance writer who burst onto the cozy literary murder-mystery scene in Murder at the Book Group. In that novel, Book One, she was swept up in solving the murder of a book club member who died after ingesting a cup of tea laced with cyanide. In Book Two, Murder at the Moonshine Inn, Hazel and her book club cronies became embroiled in solving the suspicious death of a high-powered executive found dead in the parking lot of a local watering hole. In Laughing Can Kill You, Book Three in this engaging series, poor Hazel learns that she’s been dumped by her publisher—her romance books have faced lagging sales. Ever resilient and undaunted Hazel decides to sign up for a local course in mystery writing in the hope that by switching gears, she’ll re-energize her career. The problem is, however, there is always one spoiler in every group—and writing groups are no exception.

Self-aggrandizing Randall “Randy” Zimmerman, Esquire—a lawyer-turned-thriller-writer who believes he can give “John Grisham a run for his money”--is that one annoying person in Hazel’s group. Randy is the ex-husband of a book club member. He takes confrontational pleasure in demeaning, belittling and even laughing at the work of his fellow classmates. When Hazel and her true-crime writing husband, Vince, find Randy dead, foul-play looms. Hazel--with the help of her cohorts--once again goes on a dangerous pursuit to root out the killer.  

Readers don’t need to be familiar with King’s prior books to enjoy this one, but they’ll no doubt want to after reading this well-crafted, suspenseful whodunnit augmented with a strong supporting, small-town ensemble cast and a ratcheting plot rife with shifty motives and red herrings.

Laughing Can Kill You: A Hazel Rose Book Group Mystery (Book Three) by Maggie King

Olive Lane Press, $12.99 paperback, 9798985231816, 320 pages

Publication Date: December 6, 2021

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

Read my reviews of other Hazel Rose Book Group Mysteries:

MURDER AT THE BOOK GROUP

MURDER AT THE MOONSHINE INN

The Perfect Couple

Turmoil erupts at a posh Nantucket beachfront estate when a member of a wedding party is found dead on the morning of the nuptials.

In The Perfect Couple, Elin Hilderbrand (Winter Storms) dishes up a mysterious and superbly crafted whodunit, wrapping it around a story of domestic bliss gone awry.

As is her trademark, Hilderbrand sets her novel in Nantucket--assembling a large cast of characters who gather on the island for the sultry July wedding of 20-somethings Celeste Otis and Benjamin Winbury. Celeste is a shy, down-to-earth, middle-class zoologist whose parents have what she considers the perfect marriage. Her caring and attentive, well-to-do businessman fiancé, Benji, is the offspring of a successful mystery novelist mother and a notoriously philandering father. With Celeste's mother battling cancer, the Winburys generously offer to host the event at their posh beachfront estate, Summerland. But on the morning of the wedding, the body of the maid of honor--the bride's best friend--is found floating in the surf. Was her death accidental or the result of foul play?

Hilderbrand peels back layers of her suspenseful story by tracing the details of a suspected murder investigation, chronicling Benji and Celeste's relationship and revealing the hidden lives and agendas of others. As the Nantucket chief of police probes wedding attendees for answers, the integrity of many comes into question, along with Celeste's true feelings for her husband-to-be. A rapidly snowballing plot shifts suspicions as Hilderbrand displays a riveting grasp on insidious domestic rivalries and the secrets embedded in the human heart that can lead to unexpected, shattering consequences.  

The Perfect Couple: A Novel by Elin Hilderbrand

Little Brown and Company, $28.00 Hardcover, 9780316375269, 480 pages

Publication Date: June 19, 2018

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (July 13, 2018), link HERE

Paula Hawkins: Drawn to Dark Subject Matter

The Writer's Life

Paula Hawkins is best known for The Girl on the Train, her psychological thriller (turned major motion picture) about a despondent, down on her luck, voyeuristic commuter who gets swept up in a murder investigation. Hawkins's sophomore psychological suspense novel, Into the Water (just published by Riverhead; click HERE to read my review below), delivers another dark, spellbinding story that explores the overt and subtle ways trauma, grief and long-buried secrets can affect minds, hearts and motivations. 

Why do you think The Girl on the Train resonated so deeply with readers?

Author photo by Alisa Connan

I think there are two main points of resonance: the voyeuristic impulse, which I believe is universal, and the character of Rachel (the main protagonist). Rachel is liked and loathed, but she rarely bores.

Has success altered how you write?

Success is both reassuring (people liked the book, so I must have done something right) and unnerving (I now have a huge readership with sky-high expectations). When I was writing Into the Water, I just had to shut out the noise, concentrate on the task at hand and write the best book that I could. That is how I approach every book: I want to improve, to stretch myself.

Is the town of Beckford, the setting of Into the Water, based on an actual place?

Beckford is entirely fictional, although the part of the world in which I have placed it--Northumberland, in the northeast of England--is real.

Why did you choose to structure the book via varying points of view, weaving in a complex and historical backstory and even including fictional book passages?

I had to devise all sorts of strategies in order to tell this twisted tale. There are many mysteries in the book, both current and historic--and the challenge was to allow the characters' secrets to reveal themselves at the right pace and in an interesting way. So I chose to tell my story from many different viewpoints, some first person and some third person; I chose to include flashbacks and a book-within-a-book.... I even chose to leave one or two mysteries unsolved.

A large cast of characters populates Into the Water and those characters are quite diverse in terms of age, life experience, status and background.

The characters developed slowly, over time, the way my characters always do. I have to live with them for a while, to get into their heads and under their skin. That was quite a task for this book, because it has a much wider cast of characters than The Girl on the Train did.

Any favorite characters--who and why?

I love Nickie Sage. Nickie claims to be a psychic--she says she's descended from witches and that she can talk to the dead. Everyone in the village thinks she's a nutter, or a fraud, so they ignore her. But--whether you believe her outlandish claims or not--the fact is, she's an observer. She's canny and astute, and she knows everybody's business.

When you sit down to write a new novel, do you conceptualize the book from start to finish, or does the story arise organically?

I usually know the bones of the story, its basic architecture. But the detail evolves during the writing. I think that many of my better ideas and more ingenious twists have come to me while I was immersed in the writing process.

Do you ever get blocked or stalled in your writing? If so, what do you do?

I don't tend to get blocked, but I do sometimes write myself into a corner from which I find it difficult to escape. When that happens, I usually go for a walk, take a long hot bath or, if neither of those things help, I turn to my agent, my plotting co-conspirator.

You were a journalist before writing novels. What was the impetus for you to branch out?

I was on staff at the Times for several years, but I also freelanced, working for a number of publications. I covered finance and property (real estate), which I really enjoyed, but I was never a great journalist. I'm much better at making up stories than I am at getting the truth out of a reluctant subject.

Using the pseudonym Amy Silver, you wrote "chick lit" novels. Did those influence the writing you're doing today?

Writing those books was wonderful training: I learned a great deal about developing character and about how to pace a novel in order to draw the reader into the story.

Would you ever return to writing romantic comedies?

No. I wouldn't--it really wasn't my forte (I'm not romantic, or particularly funny for that matter...).

How and why did you switch to writing such dark, psychological suspense?

Psychological suspense is much more my cup of tea--I'm drawn to dark subject matter. I'm fascinated by the behavior of people who are frightened, or grieving, or lonely, or damaged in some other way.

Who are your favorite authors?

I have so many favourites. To name just a few: Kate Atkinson, Pat Barker, Margaret Atwood, Sebastian Barry, Armistead Maupin, John Boyne, Cormac McCarthy. In terms of contemporary psych-suspense, I think Megan Abbott is wonderful.

Any plans for Into the Water to hit the big screen? And who do you think should play the key characters?

Dreamworks has optioned it, so hopefully we'll see it up on the big screen before too long. I'm not fantasy-casting just yet. Don't want to jinx anything....

NOTE: This interview is a reprint and is being published with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this Q&A as originally published on Shelf Awareness for Readers (5/26/17), link HERE

Into the Water

A close-knit British community grapples with mysterious deaths--past and present--that occurred at a notorious local riverbank.

Paula Hawkins (The Girl on the Train) delivers another dark, spellbinding suspense novel with Into the Water. This time, the search to unravel a mysterious death focuses on the river that cuts through Beckford, a small, northern British town. Nicknamed the "Drowning Pool," the river is where, over the centuries, local women--outsiders as well as misfits from within the community--have died under tragic, often suspicious, circumstances.

Danielle "Nel" Abbott--a single mother, successful photographer and lifetime Beckford resident who had been writing a book about the Drowning Pool, its history and its secrets--has become a suicide casualty at the very place of horror she had been researching. Her younger sister, Jules Abbott, gladly fled Beckford years before. An unmarried social worker in London whose bitterness and resentment kept her estranged from Nel for years, Jules returns to Beckford to sort out the "bloody mess" and care for Nel's outspoken and rebellious 15-year-old daughter, Lena. Neither believes that Nel killed herself, and Lena also has doubts about the suicide of her best friend, Katie Whittaker, at the Drowning Pool six months earlier. Katie's inconsolable parents are wracked with guilt. Were they so focused on their anxious, sensitive son that they didn't give proper attention to their confident, over-achieving--yet obviously vulnerable--daughter?

Hawkins keeps readers guessing while exploring the overt and subtle ways trauma, grief and long-buried secrets can affect minds, hearts and motivations. A growing undertow of suspense builds as some characters, consciously and subconsciously, cannot face who they are, so they reinvent themselves and their memories. This intricate story is filled with red herrings and surprising reversals that probe the tangled depths of family loyalty.

Into the Water: A Novel by Paula Hawkins

Riverhead Books, $28.00 Hardcover, 9780735211209, 400 pages

Publication Date: May 2, 2017

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (May 26, 2017), link HERE

The Sleepwalker

A mother's sleepwalking leads to her eerie disappearance and a family's search for her--and for answers.

Domestic situations that go awry are common in the psychological suspense novels of Chris Bohjalian. In The Sleepwalker, Bohjalian examines sleepwalking (or parasomnia) and the devastating impact it has on a Burlington, Vt., family.

Narrator Lianna Ahlberg deconstructs events that took place when she was a 21-year-old college senior during the autumn of 2000. When her father, Warren, a professor, went away to a conference, she tended to her 12-year-old sister, Paige, and her mother, Annalee, who had a history of sleepwalking that included benign destructive behaviors--especially when Warren was gone. Annalee had been undergoing treatment at a sleep clinic, and it had been four years since she took a nocturnal journey. Therefore, Lianna's caretaking was merely a precautionary measure. Believing her mother was past the "witching hour" (the first three hours of sleep) and out of harm's way, she dozed off, only to wake the next morning and discover Annalee missing. As the family rallies to search for her, a piece of her nightshirt is found near a riverbank, and the mystery deepens when a detective working the case seems privy to eerie, intimate details about Annalee.

Bohjalian (The Guest Room) has written an absorbing, cerebral story that probes a family's haunted emotional response to the mother's disappearance, and how each copes with confusion and grief. As they plumb the depths of Annalee's life, they uncover secrets that ultimately reveal a startling truth. 

The Sleepwalker: A Novel by Chris Bohjalian

Doubleday, $26.95 Hardcover, 978038558916, 304 pages

Publication Date: January 10, 2017

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (January 27, 2017), link HERE 

We Could Be Beautiful

A wealthy single woman falls hard for a handsome, charismatic and attentive older man who may--or may not--be harboring secrets.

Swan Huntley intimately explores the psyche of a 43-year-old, still single, affluent New Yorker in her first novel, We Could Be Beautiful. Despite her success as the owner of an upscale handmade stationery shop, Catherine West feels terribly incomplete, like a failure, until she meets handsome and striking William Stockton, a widower and independently wealthy investment banker in his 50s, at an art gallery opening. "There was something familiar about him," Catherine says of their first encounter. They learn they share a love of fine art and a history--they come from the same privileged societal class, and their parents had been friends years earlier.

When Catherine tells her mother, Elizabeth, about William, and inquires as to what she might remember about him and his family, her mother's curt, agitated response is jarring. Catherine blames her reaction on her Alzheimer's, and William later admits that Elizabeth might be remembering that, as a boy, he was once a guest in their home and broke an expensive vase. The explanation seems plausible as William and Catherine move in together and begin planning their wedding. However, their blissful romance is marred once Catherine discovers an old diary her mother kept and a letter from a former nanny, which may shed light into Elizabeth's troubled reaction to William.

Deception and greed are suspenseful undercurrents that propel this well-plotted, seductive psychological thriller. Huntley has created a riveting heroine in whom readers will eagerly invest as she is forced to unravel the truth about a man who seems too good to be true and a shrouded past that may hold the key to her future. 

We Could Be Beautiful by Swan Huntley
Doubleday, $25.95 Hardcover, 9780385540599, 352 pp
Publication Date: June 28, 2016
To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (6/24/16), link HERE

Bridges Burned: A Zoe Chambers Mystery

Zoe Chambers is a paramedic and deputy coroner who works hard "to find answers for the dead" in Vance Township, a tight-knit Pennsylvania farm community. In her first two books, Circle of Influence and Lost Legacy, Zoe tracked the killer of a prominent town board member and investigated the suicide of a local farmer. In book three, Bridges Burned, Zoe stops a man from re-entering his burning house in an attempt to save his wife. When the raging fire proves fatal, Zoe empathizes with the grieving, homeless, unemployed widower, Holt Farabee, and his ten year-old daughter, Maddie. She offers lodging to the pair in the dilapidated 1850s farmhouse she shares with her aging, infirm landlady. In exchange, Holt, who has handyman skills, agrees to do odd jobs.

Zoe soon forges a bond with Holt and identifies with Maddie, as Zoe lost her father when she, too, was a young girl. But when Police Chief Pete Adams--a man whom Zoe has kept at a romantic arm's length for years--learns of the living arrangement, he's not pleased as his investigation is harvesting suspicions about the deadly fire and Holt's past. When Pete tries to caution Zoe, she refuses to listen. Might Zoe's stubbornness lead to further peril? 

Small town dynamics color a suspenseful, well-plotted storyline rife with red herrings that reveal how seemingly mundane lives are much more complicated and connected than first believed. But it's Annette Dashofy's likeable heroine--her vulnerabilities and deepening challenges--that makes for another winning installment in this series.

Burning Bridges by Annette Dashofy

Henery Press, $14.95 Paperback, 9781941962398, 288 pp  

Publication Date: April 7, 2015

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (4/10/15), link HERE

A Legendary 40 Years of Publishing for Author Mary Higgins Clark

Opinion:   

The 'Queen of Suspense' still going strong after 40 years

 "Where Are the Children?" the breakout suspense novel 

by author 

Mary Higgins Clark  

turns 40 years old 

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Opinion/Editorial: "Other Views/ Guest Columnist" (Section A-11)

BY KATHLEEN GERARD

To read the article in its entirety, click on the highlighted title above