Newcomer by Higashino and some debut mysteries

What could be better than to enjoy the holiday break by reading several new mystery stories? 

My favorite so far is NEWCOMER by Keigo Higashino, a new author to me, but a best-selling novelist in Japan and Asia. His earlier work, The Devotion of Suspect X was an Edgar Award finalist.  This more recent title, translated by Giles Murray, was a LibraryReads selection for November and can be read as a stand alone.  The main character in NEWCOMER is Detective Kyochiro Kaga, recently transferred to a new precinct in the Tokyo Police Department. In order to solve the murder of a recently divorced woman, Kaga interviews the victim’s family and their associates. But the story begins with inquiries at a rice cracker shop in Tokyo’s traditional shopping district of Nihonbashi, where the victim, another newcomer, had recently moved. Kaga, a Columbo-like figure, later also visits a traditional restaurant, plus stores selling china, clocks, pastries, and handicrafts. What makes this mystery especially memorable are the small mysteries within the larger one since Higashino cleverly develops the characters and their own secrets at each locale. In fact, over two dozen characters are included in a helpful cast list.  Although I initially picked-up this book and found the translation to be a bit jarring, particularly when Murray chooses phrases for dialogue like “got you” and “my old man,” I kept reading – the story was compelling and allowed for ignoring those discordant notes. NEWCOMER received a starred review from Kirkus. 

 
I also felt transported by the setting, a fictional Indian reservation in New Mexico, for HEARTS OF THE MISSING by Carol Potenza. Sergeant Nicky Matthews of the Tsiba’ashi D’yini (Fire-Sky Pueblo) reservation police deals with a misogynistic boss and undercover FBI activity while trying to solve the murder of Sandra Deering, an undergraduate who was investigating “lost” members of the tribe. Nicky obviously cares about the people she has sworn to protect and has gradually overcome biases on the reservation against outsiders while also trying to understand more about her own disconcerting visions of the Wind Mother. There is quite a bit for readers to process in this fast moving story, including a potential serial killer, tribal customs and ritual sacrifice, but it is an engrossing read worth the effort.  

This debut mystery won the Tony Hillerman Prize for Potenza, an assistant professor in chemistry and biochemistry at New Mexico State University. I am looking forward to more in this series; HEARTS OF THE MISSING received starred reviews from both Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. 

MURDER AT THE MILL by M.B. Shaw is more of a traditional cozy mystery, set in a small English village where portrait artist Iris Grey is coming to terms with the end of her marriage. There, she finds purpose in agreeing to create a birthday portrait of The Mill’s owner, Dominic Wetherby. Soon, the holidays arrive and Iris is drawn into some local celebrations. Of course, it is not long until Wetherby’s body is found and Iris sets out with his suspicious daughter-in-law to disprove the ruling of suicide and find a culprit.   

Overall, I thought the solution (in terms of perpetrator if not motive) was fairly obvious, but this is still a diverting read with plenty of family members as possible suspects and even a bit of romance. MURDER AT THE MILL received a starred review from Kirkus and is a mystery debut under a pseudonym used by established author Tilly Bagshawe.

The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth J. Church

In her debut novel, The Atomic Weight of Love, Elizabeth J. Church explores the dreams and sacrifices one makes over the course of a lifetime.  An only child of a widowed mother, Meridian Wallace heads off to the University of Chicago in 1941 with the ambition to study birds, especially crows, and to become an ornithologist. She describes her goals as “to question, to ponder, to ask and to learn.  Education was my drug of choice- classrooms, books, lectures, pushing myself to understand.”  And she does, being accepted into a graduate program at Cornell – one she must defer, however, when she moves to Los Alamos to be with her new husband, Alden Whetstone, a physicist 20 years her senior.  

There, while Alden pursues the study of atomic energy, Meri informally charts the social behavior of crows, describing and drawing the activities of Winged Foot, White Wing and Beacon in her journals. She and her husband grow increasingly distant from each other and with seemingly little in common with the other wives, Meri finds a dear friend in Belle, and a soul mate of sorts in Clay, both of whom assuage her loneliness for a time.  At one point, her mother offers advice, saying, “Happiness is unrealistic? Constant happiness, yes.  Contentment, that‘s realistic.”

Many decades pass, social changes are chronicled, and Meridian ages, but also matures and grows, much like the changing roles for women from the 1940’s through the 1970’s and beyond. The Atomic Weight of Love is an excellent choice for book groups with much to discuss in terms of personal relationships, science, and ethical choices. Church deftly weaves in information about birds, and at the beginning of each chapter she even inserts a brief description of a type of bird (e.g., a charm of hummingbirds, an exaltation of larks, murder of crows) foreshadowing some of the plot elements.

Readers who enjoy The Atomic Weight of Love should also look for titles like The Wives of Los Alamos by TaraShea Nesbit and two recently published works of non-fiction: Rise of the Rocket Girls by Nathalia Holt and The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman --  the last is one Meri would certainly embrace. The Atomic Weight of Love is an Amazon Best Book of May 2016.