Whiskey Tango
Foxtrot
David Shafer. Little, Brown/
Mulholland, $26 (432p)
ISBN 978-0-316-25263-8
Journalist Shafer hits
all the right buttons
in his debut as he
mixes crime fiction,
espionage, and SF in
a darkly comic novel about paranoia and
big business. A battle for control over all
the information in the world has begun.
The Committee, an international organization comprising industry and media
leaders, has plans to privatize the news,
the publishing industry, and all other
social media. Dear Diary, an online movement, has set itself up as a formidable enemy of the Committee, using politics, spy
craft, and technology to thwart its initiatives. Caught up in this war are Leila
Majnoun, a disaffected nonprofit worker;
Leo Crane, an unorthodox kindergarten teacher who lives off a modest trust
fund; and Mark Deveraux, a drug addict
who inadvertently becomes a bogus self-help guru and appears to work for the
Committee. At times convoluted but
never slack, the plot thrives on a realistic
approach while seamlessly switching between such locales as Myanmar, London,
and Oregon. The Committee’s takeover of
the Internet, its ability to change words
as they are being typed, and its targeting of enemies’ family members evokes a
chilling, Orwellian society.
The White Magic Five and Dime:
A Tarot Mystery
Steve Hockensmith, with Lisa Falco. Midnight Ink
( www.midnightinkbooks.com), $14.99 trade paper
(336p) ISBN 978-0-7387-4022-5
Cozy readers with a taste for humor will
welcome this hilarious series debut from
Edgar finalist Hockensmith (Holmes on
the Range) and Falco (A Mother’s Promise).
Alanis McLachlan has literally no fond
memories of her con-woman mother,
Barbra, and has not spoken with her for
decades. So it’s a double shock when
Alanis learns that Barbra was murdered
in Berdache, Ariz.—and that her will
leaves everything to Alanis, including
a shop called the White Magic Five &
Dime. Curious, she travels from Chicago
to the small town, where she’s intrigued
by her mother’s latest scheme to sepa-
rate fools from their money—a tarot
card-reading operation. The search for
the identity of the person who strangled
Barbra elicits threats to Alanis herself,
who also finds time to get sweet on a lo-
cal lawman. Readers will eagerly await
the next installment.
The White Van
Patrick Hoffman. Atlantic Monthly, $24 (256p) ISBN
978-0-8021-2304-6
A heist propels Hoffman’s outstanding
first novel. Sophia, a Russian emigre,
plans to rob a San Francisco branch of US
Bank with some inside assistance from its
manager, Rada Harkov, and the help of
two people recruited (decidedly against
their wills) for the job: “the Russian,”
another emigre and a black-market trader
who owes Sophia money; and Emily,
a young woman coerced into helping
with drugs and threats (“She had been
made into a slave”). The robbery nets
some $880,000, a powerful temptation
for another major character, Elias, an officer with the SFPD Gang Task Force.
An alcoholic, Elias is plagued by money
worries. Beyond the engaging plot, the
book focuses on people’s behavior in the
face of impossible choices. Hoffman, who
spent nine years working as a PI in San
Francisco, writes with great authority
about the city’s seamy side and the grim
realities of life for its down-on-their-luck
denizens.
Why Kings Confess:
A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery
C.S. Harris. NAL/Obsidian, $24.95 (352p) ISBN 978-
0-451-41755-8
The past casts a long shadow in Harris’s
best Regency whodunit yet, the eighth
after 2013’s What Darkness Brings. In
January 1813, a case comes to aristocratic
sleuth Sebastian St. Cyr, estranged son
of the Earl of Hendon, Chancellor of the
Exchequer, from his closest friend, Dr.
Paul Gibson. On an East London street,
Gibson stumbled across a grisly scene—
a woman seriously wounded near the
butchered corpse of a French physician,
Damion Pelletan, whose heart was removed. The murder and assault coincide
with a possible turning point in Anglo-Franco relations. The English are considering making peace with Napoleon,
a prospect that does not sit well with
the French royalists in exile. The powers
that be, including St. Cyr’s überpowerful
father-in-law, Lord Jarvis, who’s a cousin
of the king, attribute the Pelletan murder
to a footpad, but the investigator finds
that theory unpersuasive, especially after
learning the mutilation has resonance for
survivors of the Terror who remember
that the Dauphine’s heart was removed
in an autopsy. Harris melds mystery and
history as seamlessly as she integrates developments in her lead’s personal life into
the plot.
Windigo Island
William Kent Krueger. Atria,
$24.99 (352p) ISBN 978-
1-4767-4923-5
Edgar-winner
Krueger highlights
the vulnerability of
Native American
youth in his excellent
14th Cork O’Connor novel (after 2013’s
Tamarack County). PI Cork, a former
Minnesota sheriff, reluctantly investigates
the disappearance of 14-year-old Mariah
Arceneaux, who left her home near Bad
Bluff, Wis., a year earlier. The battered
body of the friend who accompanied her,
Carrie Verga, recently washed ashore on
Windigo Island in Lake Superior. A plea
for help from Mariah’s diabetic mother,
Louise, to the sage Henry Meloux ends
with Cork’s older daughter, Jenny, rashly
vowing to help save Mariah. This move
forces Cork’s hand, putting him on the
trail of a ruthless man called Windigo.
Jenny, Louise, and centenarian Henry
play key roles as the mission tests both
spiritual and physical powers. Krueger
paints a vivid picture of the sordid cycle
of poverty, abuse, alcoholism, and runaway (or throwaway) children on the
reservation, and reminds us of the evil
of men all too willing to exploit the innocent.
Without You
Saskia Sarginson. Hachette/Redhook, $15 trade
paper (400p) ISBN 978-0-316-24624-8
At the start of this strong psychological
thriller from British author Sarginson,
her second novel after 2013’s The Twins,
17-year-old Eva Gale goes missing in a
boating accident off the Suffolk coast in
