A potent assemblage of briskly paced tales that will satisfy mystery and crime noir fans.
A collection of short fiction primarily centers on beachfront locales.
In assembling a variety of literary tales, short mysteries, and crime noir, Olsen handpicked these stories not only for their often bestselling and award-winning authors, but also for their suspense quotient and deft ability to thrill in a few pages. The opener, “In the Bank,” from novelist Antoine Wilson, follows two greedy thieves with a boat who hatch a plan to disguise themselves as Coast Guard sailors to intercept a lucrative marijuana shipment from cartel smugglers. Things, of course, go horribly wrong, as is the case in other tales like Edgar Award winner Naomi Hirahara’s crisp, effective “Off the 405,” in which a multifamily day at a Southern California beach quickly devolves into high-speed chaos on a freeway, and the noir crime short “Summer of ’86” from writer Tod Goldberg. Goldberg’s story focuses on a recently released felon traveling to Monterey Bay to help a sibling make ends meet after her boyfriend mysteriously disappears. The East Coast finds private investigator and newspaper reporter Susan Jaffe in prime form as she unravels the coldblooded murder of an original member of a private nudist resort in Shamus Award–winning writer Charles Ardai’s charming and endlessly engrossing mystery “The Naked and the Dead.” The quirky cast of characters, Jaffe’s pluckiness, and the seamless narration create a winning tale that will have readers seeking Ardai’s longer mysteries. Novelist Rob Roberge’s atmospheric missing person story “The Five Thieves of Bombay Beach” is set near the dry, desolate, sulfur-stinking Salton Sea. The narrator searches the beach for his father, who vanished. Other tales vary in theme, from the eclectically imagined life of jazz great Miles Davis in the 1950s to a horror yarn about outlaw sisters who murder together. Though these works often share similar themes, the diversity of the narrative voices and the seasoned storytelling abilities of these talented authors create compelling tones that evoke the suspenseful, the downtrodden, and the murderously moody. The collection’s longest entry is Alex Webb Wilson’s novella Wasteland, which uses essential elements and family bonds to brilliantly conclude the anthology with raw, vividly realized emotions. Olsen has masterfully gathered an established crew of writers to maximum effect.
A potent assemblage of briskly paced tales that will satisfy mystery and crime noir fans.Pub Date: July 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73-732280-1
Page Count: 217
Publisher: Kelp Books
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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