New Hampshire woods. Agent: Nat Sobel,
Sobel Weber Associates. (May)
The River of Souls
Robert R. McCammon. Subterranean (www.
subterraneanpress.com), $24.95 (264p) ISBN
978-1-59606-630-4
Macabre surprises abound in McCammon’s entertaining fifth Matthew Corbett
historical (after 2012’s Providence Rider).
In the summer of 1703, while on a visit
to Charles Town in the Carolina colony,
“problem-solver” Matthew and Magnus
Muldoon, his “big as a mountain” new
friend, join a manhunt for three escaped
slaves, one of whom has been accused of
murdering a plantation owner’s daughter
(though Matthew has uncovered evidence
that implicates one of the hunters). Their
travel up the River of Solstice—which the
locals refer to as “the river of souls”—
proves to be a journey into the genuine
heart of darkness, replete with ravenous
alligators, a tribe of fiercely savage Native
Americans, and a seemingly demonic
monster known as the Soul Cryer. McCammon resorts to a few credibility-stretching gambits in the closing chapters, but, as usual, he nicely evokes America’s colonial past and deftly straddles the
boundary between the explicable and the
supernatural. Agent: Cameron McClure,
DMLA. (May)
★ The Stranger on the Train
Abbie Taylor. Atria, $15 trade paper (352p)
ISBN 978-1-4767-5497-0
British author Taylor’s taut debut is a
heart-stopper. One Sunday evening on a
London Underground platform, single
mom Emma Turner watches in horror as
her one-year-old son, Ritchie, somehow
gets on a train that leaves without her.
Did someone snatch Ritchie? The police
assigned to Emma’s missing person’s case
have little sympathy. She has no family,
few friends, and no connection with the
boy’s father. Dirt poor, she’s overwhelmed
by the responsibility of raising a child, the
spawn of a quick fling. Worse, in a fit of
desperation, she earlier confessed to her
GP that she wished Ritchie were dead. So
everybody doubts whether the tot was really kidnapped. But when the chips are
down, with Ritchie really out of her life,
Emma rises to the challenge of saving her
son. Beginning with the gasp-inducing
Dante’s Poison: A Mark Angelotti
Novel
Lynne Raimondo. Prometheus/Seventh Street,
$15.95 trade paper (280p) ISBN 978-1-61614-
879-9
Raimondo’s well-crafted second Mark
Angelotti novel (after 2012’s Dante’s
Wood) finds the Chicago psychiatrist taking part in a new drug trial that he hopes
will reverse his recent blindness. To stay
busy, Angelotti agrees to help Hallie
Sanchez, a friend and potential love interest, look into the murder of a local
journalist—and to testify in a lawsuit involving the suicide of a fellow psychiatrist’s patient. Just as Angelotti begins to
explore the murky psychological angles
in each of these cases, he and Hallie are
viciously attacked. Determined to tie
disparate threads together, he enlists cro-nies and colleagues to fight the good
fight and avenge the injured Hallie. The
obstinate, often angry Angelotti puts
himself in harm’s way in pursuing suspects who are well aware of his weakness-es and who set a series of deadly traps.
Chicago serves as the distinctive backdrop to this appealing mystery. Agent:
Sharlene Martin, Martin Literary Management. (May)
first chapter, readers won’t exhale until the
end. Agent: Marianne Gunn O’Connor, Marianne Gunn O’Connor Literary Agency. (May)
Every Hidden Fear
Linda Rodriguez. Minotaur, $25.99 (304p)
ISBN 978-1-250-04915-5
A peaceful college town goes berserk in
Rodriguez’s solid third Skeet Bannion
mystery (after 2012’s Every Broken Trust).
When real estate developer Ash Mowbray
returns to his hometown of Brewster, Mo.,
he proposes to build a new mall that would
ruin the old-fashioned downtown, but his
real purpose is to humiliate and destroy
those who looked down on him as a youth.
Suspects abound after someone fatally
clobbers Mowbray with a golf club. Skeet
Bannion, the strong-minded but emotionally vulnerable chief of the Choteau University police, must investigate on her own
after a sociopathic tycoon pressures the local police to settle the case quickly by framing a high school athlete. Rodriguez efficiently stage-manages a large cast of townsfolk, and neatly uses what Skeet discovers
about other people to comment on her personal confusion about her Cherokee heritage and her fear of romance. Agent: Ellen
Geiger, Frances Goldin Literary Agency. (May)
★ Sting of the Drone
Richard A. Clarke. St. Martin’s/Dunne, $25.99 (304p) ISBN 978-1-250-04797-7
Insider knowledge of politics paired with amazing state- of-the-art technical details fuels this realistic nonstop ac- tion thriller, the best yet from Clarke (The Scorpion’s Gate). From the Global Coordination Center at Nevada’s
Creech Air Force Base, the center’s director, CIA officer
Sandra Vittonelli, oversees her roomful of drone pilots as
they hunt down terrorists across the planet. Once a “Kill
Call” to Washington officials establishes that a “High Value
Individual” is a threat to the U.S. and eligible to be
“droned,” the pilots fire missiles remotely from the unmanned planes and America is instantly that much safer. When a Pakistani tribal
clan, al-Qaeda, a revenge-seeking terrorist, and two Ukrainian hackers join forces
and declare war on the American drones, a deadly back-and-forth duel ensues,
threatening the program and the lives of those who send the planes into the sky.
Clarke, who served in the White House under presidents Reagan and Clinton (the
latter appointed him as National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counterterrorism), as well as both Bushes, has set the standard by which
all such titles in this growing subgenre will be measured. Agent: Andrew Wylie,
Wylie Agency. (May)