I'm not sure why Minnesota, a place known for nice, has so many writers and readers attracted to the dark and the deadly, but I'm happy to encourage the madness with some great summer mysteries.
"Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn (Crown, 432 pages, $25)
Gillian Flynn's barbed and brilliant "Gone Girl" has two deceitful, disturbing, irresistible narrators and a plot that twists so many times you'll be dizzy. This "catastrophically romantic" story about Nick and Amy is a "fairy tale reverse transformation" that reminded me of Patricia Highsmith in its psychological suspense and Kate Atkinson in its insanely clever plotting. Unemployed and close to broke, Nick and Amy move from Manhattan to Hannibal, Mo. (birthplace of Mark Twain), where Nick grew up and where Amy, who used to be "overdressed in ... flashy little frocks" eating "food bites" as "decorative and unsubstantial" as she was, is suddenly "complimenting women ... on pickle slices wrapped in cream cheese wrapped in salami." At times our narrators' social commentary evokes Twain in their cynical slagging of everything from Manhattan hipsters to Midwest morality. But it's their decaying marriage, "the endless small surrenders" of it, and Amy's violent abduction that drive the killer plot.
"The Skeleton Box" by Bryan Gruley (Touchstone, 336 pages, $25)
The Bingo Night burglar has folks panicked in Starvation Lake, a northern Michigan town, home to the Pine County Pilot, "circulation 3,876 and falling," and hockey-playing reporter Gus Carpenter. When Gus' mom's dearest friend is killed during one of the break-ins, Gus gets involved in investigating the who, the what and the why of the burglaries. Up until Mrs. B's death, the burglar has never taken anything, only rifling through belongings and ransacking files. Turns out the answers to Gus' questions have something to do with the contents of a lockbox belonging to his mom, the murder of a nun years ago, and long-held secrets among Starvation Lake women. Uncovering this conspiracy is made more difficult because of Gus' mom's dementia and the fact that she can no longer "remember what she wasn't supposed to remember." This is the third book in Gruley's outstanding series and the characters have become friends: neighbors on the lake, including the members of the Midnight Hours Hockey league; Soupy, who's older than Gus "but sometimes feels like his little brother," and his not completely ex-girlfriend Darlene. Most of all I appreciate Gus' struggles to work in a profession that has value, but, like many things in Gus' world (and ours), may not be fully understood until it's gone.
Gruley will be at Once Upon a Crime Bookstore at noon July 7.
"Curse of the Jade Lily" by David Housewright (Minotaur, 336 pages, $25.99)
Like his author, Rushmore McKenzie is a St. Paul native, and as his name implies, he's rock solid and quite remarkable. The insurance company that made McKenzie a millionaire has been keeping an eye on him and so, it seems, have art thieves who've stolen the Jade Lily, a chunk of a gem worth millions, from a Minneapolis art museum. The thieves (artnappers) are holding the Jade Lily for ransom, expecting McKenzie to be the go-between. To me, Housewright has always been one of Minnesota's gems in the genre, a writer whose books may be lighter in tone than John Sandford's, but are just as suspenseful and satisfying. When a body is found in the snow near "Wedding Hill" in Theodore Wirth Park, McKenzie can no longer ignore being dragged into the investigation, one that gets him in trouble with the U.S. State Department and the shaky Bosnian government. "The evil that men do lives after them," thinks McKenzie when bodies begin piling up. "The good is oft interred with their bones." A critical decision made, McKenzie adds, "Screw that. Bury the evil too." And he does.
