The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: a Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale

A horrible child murder took place in the summer of 1860 at Road Hill House in a small English village. One of the first Scotland Yard detective inspectors was sent to solve the mystery of who might be cruel enough to kill a sleeping three year old boy and cast his body in the servants’ privy. Countless lurid, highly opinionated newspaper articles and average, everyday gossip made this case a national sensation.

Kate Summerscale does a wonderful job of interweaving the history of detective novels with the events and personae of this real life case. The basic facts of the case will capture your interest and the individual characters intrigue you with their layers of deep, dark secrets that may well have laid the groundwork for a violent death. - Reviewed by Nancy

A Very British Gangster

A look at the real life of Gotti-esque Dominic Noonan of Manchester, England. He gets things done for his community members that the police and social service agencies can’t achieve such as reuniting a mother with her baby “stolen” by the grandparents or making sure one neighbor doesn’t feel free to assault another neighbor with a hammer. Of course, Dom doesn’t have to worry about what he can legally do to effect change. He does whatever he thinks will work even though that might include threats of or actual violence.

There are a whole bunch of Noonans, brothers, cousins, godchildren, in Dom’s “security business.” When one of his brothers dies in a motorcycle accident, so many people come to show respect that the police have to spend thousands of pounds on crowd and traffic control. If you liked watching the Sopranos, try this Manchester version of crime family life. - Reviewed by Nancy

What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn

This debut mystery begins in Birmingham, England in 1984. Kate Meaney is 10, a loner who lives with her grandmother after her father has a stroke and dies, and is obsessed with becoming a detective. Her world revolves around her imaginary detective agency, Falcon Investigation, which she runs with her stuffed toy, Mickey the Monkey. Kate lives next door to a sweets shop, and offers surveillance to the owner and his son, Adrian, who at 22 is Kate’s main friend in her solitary life and the only adult who knows of her desire to one day be a private detective. She also does undercover spying at the new shopping center, Green Oaks, and it is there that she suddenly disappears one day, never to be seen again. Adrian, pulled into the police station for questioning, also vanishes after the anguish of being accused of her abduction.

After Kate is lost, the novel jumps to 2003, where Adrian’s sister, Lisa, is an assistant manager at a record shop in the Green Oaks mall. She knows her brother is alive only because he sends her a mixed tape every year on her birthday, but it is not until she finds a stuffed monkey in the mall that she begins to think constantly of Kate and Adrian’s disappearance. Shortly after finding the monkey, a lonely security guard working the night shift at the mall begins to see a girl show up on his CCTV cameras that looks like Kate.

Part mystery and part ghost story, the novel also has funny moments to it, and a budding romance between Lisa and Kurt, the security guard haunted by images of Kate. Both Lisa and Kurt are hiding secrets, including Kurt’s horrible one of seeing Kate the day she was disappeared. Everything is artfully tied together at the end, and readers do get to find out what happened to Kate. Full of wonderfully detailed characters, a haunting desire to find out what happens to Kate, and many surprises, I was enchanted by this novel and couldn’t put it down. While heartbreaking, I highly recommend this gripping book. – Reviewed by Sarah

Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins

Addressing the realities, insecurities, fears and joys of modern life, Emily Perkins takes us into the world of Tom and his wife, Ann. Perkins invites us into an intimate connection with this young couple trying to hold their complex lives together. Set in England, the story opens after Ann has died and Tom is seeking to make sense of her death and of her life. Sensitively and honestly, Perkins uses Tom’s voice to carry us back into their lives before her death and into the sense of fragility that haunts them. The descriptions of their love, the excitement of their pregnancy and of the challenges, both seen and unseen, they face drew me deeply and quickly into the story. Knowing that Ann has died, I followed along wondering if her death was caused by the hooded man who she’s seen following her, a health problem or some other incident. While this suspense is one focus of the book, it by no means overshadows the story. The writing moves along quickly but not without the well-written details and descriptions of subtleties that made me feel as if I knew Ann and Tom as friends. This is a great book for readers who enjoy a bit of suspense without ending up being kept awake by nightmares! It also offers an insightful tale of what it’s truly like to live in these times. - Reviewed by Cassandra

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

Told through a series of letters between writer Juliet Ashton and those who lived through the WWII German occupation of Guernsey, this historical fiction was engaging and imaginative. I learned a lot about what life must have been like during the five years that the English lived under German rule, but I was also taken with the lively and witty writing of the authors. It was a great summer read, one of those books that you can’t put down and when you finish, you wish for more. - Reviewed by Janet