Review: "The Wasp Trap," Mark Edwards

Six friends, who haven’t seen each other for more than 20 years, have gathered at a posh Notting Hill home to mark the passing of their mentor, Sebastian Marlowe.

It doesn’t take long for their pasts to catch up with them.

Professor Marlowe had hired the group of smart postgraduates in 1999, to help him create an online dating site. Now Theo, a successful businessman, and his wife, Georgina, who teaches yoga, are married. They’re hosting this London reunion/celebration of life.

Will, the narrator, is a struggling writer. He was the “wordsmith” of the group and came up with the site’s clever name: Butterfly.net. Sophie, now a jewelry maker, contributed creative ideas, while Lily is still an uber-techie. Rohan was also business-oriented, but seemed to spend a lot of time watching footie with Sebastian’s nephew, Dominic.

The gathering is mildly uncomfortable from the get-go, but then things really go south. The group has been trapped in the house and their lives are on the line. One of them has a secret that must be revealed to save all their lives—but no one’s talking.

At least at first. In flashbacks to 1999, when they were all working at Marlowe’s country estate, gradually each member of the group reveals something that the rest don’t know. Despite the confessions, the tension ratchets up and blood is shed—before the final, devastating secret becomes known.

The Wasp Trap is a taut psychological thriller with compelling characters and an intriguing plot. Tech infuses the narrative—it is the reason the group got together and the reason they are trapped. Lily developed a test for psychopaths back in the day, which had major repercussions. Now she’s created a lie detector test. Will that save the day for the friends? It looks like it will—until it doesn’t.

At times, The Wasp Trap seemed just a little implausible. But then there was another twist, and I really didn’t care. I was too busy turning the page.

Review: "The Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer"

Translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb

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The popular Icelandic crime novelist Elín S. Jónsdóttir is missing.

Police detective Helgi Reykdal is especially intrigued to be on the case. 

Readers first met Helgi in Death in the Sanitorium. He loves classic crime fiction, and was doing post-graduate work when the police recruited him. Helgi has read Jonsdottir’s work. He is intrigued by her life and determined to find out what has happened to her. 

Helgi interviews Elin's friends—her publisher Rut and husband Thor, and Lovisa, a lawyer. Lovisa and Elín had gone hiking together. Later they’d met at a favorite cafe, a ritual with them. Lovisa hasn’t seen her since.

They say they are totally flummoxed by Elin's disappearance—but are they, really?

In alternating chapters, a recorded 2005 interview with Elín (by an unnamed, unseen reporter) plays out. The writer and her life are slowly revealed.  Other chapters deal with Hulda, Helgi’s predecessor at the police station. In the 1970s, she investigated a bank robbery that resulted in an employee being killed. She has dropped out of sight since she left the force, and Helgi wants to find out what happened to her as well. 

Meanwhile, Helgi has broken up with the alcoholic and violent (and scary) Bergthóra but she’s back on the scene, now stalking Helgi's new girlfriend, Anita. 

Helgi is a somewhat passive character, yet he is growing emotionally and he is tenancious. Jónasson’s writing has a flat affect, which reflects Helgi’s personality and adds to the tension of the story. The detective’s quiet determination serves him well as he slowly uncovers the secrets of Elín's life. But he fails to confront Bergthóra, and that proves to be a tragic mistake.

I enjoyed this thriller, which kept me turning the pages without clenching my stomach. Helgi is now co-owner of a second-hand bookshop. His classic crime fiction reading list is included. Elín’s writing life, as she describes it in the interview, is absorbing. These are welcome cozy elements that enhance, rather than detract from, the evil doings in the narrative.

Though Hulda’s story eventually intertwines with Elin’s disappearance, her whereabouts are still unknown. Although I usually dislike loose ends, I assume Helgi will be continuing his investigation of Hulda in the next book. At least, I hope so. Hulda is a sympathetic and interesting character.

This, the second book in the series, ends with a shocker, as did the first one. I am already anxious to find out what really happened in the final pages. I was wrong about the first book!

Review: "Don't Let Him In," Lisa Jewell

Ash is devastated by the loss of her personable, successful father, Paddy Swann. But things get worse when her mother falls for a former colleague of Paddy’s, Nick Radcliffe. Nick writes a letter to Nina Swann after he hears about Paddy’s death, and they correspond for a while. When they meet, they hit it off. Nick is handsome, generous and full of ideas for expanding Paddy’s small restaurant chain. But Ash is suspicious. She contacts Paddy’s long-ago girlfriend, Jane, and together they begin an investigation.

Just who is Nick Radcliffe? The story unfolds in chapters narrated by alternating voices: Ash, an unnamed man, and a woman named Martha. She runs a successful flower shop in a village near Ash and Nina’s home in Kent. Martha is head over heels in love with her new husband, Alistair, but his strange behavior and frequent absences worry her. She begins an investigation of her own…

Jewell is in fine form in her latest psychological thriller. Ash is a fragile but likable character who is struggling to find herself as an adult. Martha, a mother of three who has built a fine life for herself, engenders compassion as she makes a succession of bad choices. Nick is a hateful, yet fascinating, character. The story’s setting in scenic coastal Kent lends a cozy vibe that contrasts nicely with the intensity of the plot.

Readers will definitely echo “don’t let him in,” as they furiously turn the pages to learn the depth of Nick’s depravity. A near-perfect, gut-wrenching thriller!

Review: "Murderland," Caroline Fraser

There were 669 serial killers at large in the 1990s in the U.S. The number dropped to 371 in the 2000s, and to 117 from 2010-2020.

Could stricter environmental regulations be the reason?

Gasoline used in cars contained lead from the 1920s until 1996, when it was banned. Lead-based paint wasn’t recognized as a threat to children’s health until the 1970s; it was outlawed in 1978.

Meanwhile, throughout most of the 20th century, industrial smelters spewed lead, arsenic, copper and other toxins into the skies of numerous cities, including Tacoma, Washington—where Ted Bundy grew up.

He’s not the only serial killer the Pacific Northwest has produced.

Is there a connection?

Caroline Fraser makes a strong case for one in “Murderland,” an astonishing mélange of scientific data, true crime, memoir and sociological analysis.

Fraser grew up on Mercer Island, in the Seattle Metro area. She was born in 1961 into a dysfunctional family and weaves the bizarre and sometimes frightening events of the latter half of the 20th century into her narrative.

As I grew up in the same period, I vividly remember the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy; the Manson murders; Chappaquiddick; Patty Hearst; and Three Mile Island. 

It did feel sometimes like the world was spinning out of control.

In Fraser’s own back yard, the Lacey V. Murrow Floating Bridge (connecting Seattle and Mercer Island) provides another backdrop of confusion and death. It was the scene of frequent bizarre accidents until it finally sank in 1990.

Fraser paints a horrifying picture of the pollution she believes contributed to the derangement of serial killers like Bundy, Israel Keyes, Richard Ramirez (the Night Stalker), Gary Ridgway (the Green River Killer) and Randy Woodfield (the I-5 Killer). The smell of Washington state’s third most populous city was known as “the aroma of Tacoma.” Fraser writes. “Gardens fail; crops die; bees die. Strange spots appear on the laundry hung out to dry on the line.” Ash from the smelter falls onto the streets; children develop breathing problems.

Workers got sick, had disfiguring accidents. It’s not easy reading—it is compelling reading.

Then there are the serial killers and their unspeakable crimes. Sometimes, when I’m watching a crime drama that features a lunatic torturer, I think, “Really?” Well, yes. Really. Again, not easy reading.

And yet, I was glued to the pages of this book. Fraser is a fine writer, and she is angry about a lot of things—the toxins, the Rockefellers and Guggenheims who financed the industries, her father…the list goes on. But the book is not a rant. It is well-researched, passionate and even poetic at times. 

I wondered about my well-being when I was about in the middle of “Murderland,” when the dismembered body parts (both murder victims and smelter workers) were piling up. Maybe I really needed to be reading a cozy mystery set in a quaint Southern town with a fabulous bookstore.

Nah. “Murderland” was worth the angst. Besides, I needed to see Bundy executed, and the smelters shut down.