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customers. Vi’s important relationships—
with Rainwater, her grandmother, and a
cat named Emerson—tend to overshadow
the plot, which is attenuated to begin with.
Armchair detectives have few clues to guide
them to the unexpected dénouement.
Readers who like some esoteric literary
history and don’t mind a pinch of magic in
their cozies will want to take a look. Agent:
Nicole Resciniti, Seymour Agency. (Dec.)
Death with Dostoevsky
Katherine Bolger Hyde. Severn, $28.99
(288p) ISBN 978-0-7278-8899-0
Hyde’s lively fourth Crime with the
Classics mystery (after Cyanide with Christie)
finds Prof. Emily Cavanaugh back at Bede
College in Portland, Ore., to research and
eventually write “the definitive English-
language work on Dostoyevsky’s tormented
relationship with his Orthodox faith as it
played out in his fiction.” She shares a study
area with Daniel Razumov, a former stu-
dent of hers, who has become the new
target of Taylor Curzon, a 40-something
professor with a habit of “sinking her teeth
into a different piece of fresh young male
meat each semester.” When Taylor ends
up beaten to death, all the evidence points
to Daniel, who has no alibi, nor does he
have any memory of the time the crime was
committed. Emily steps up to investigate
and soon uncovers plenty of other suspects.
She lays out her reasoning in such a way as
to allow the reader to follow her thoughts,
but not necessarily beat her to the crime’s
solution. Campus hijinks and budding
romances complement the satisfying fair-
play plot. Agent: Kimberley Cameron,
Kimberley Cameron Assoc. (Dec.)
And the Sea Became Blood:
A John Jordan Mystery Thriller
Michael Lister. Pulpwood, $27.99 (354p)
ISBN 978-1-947606-36-4
A natural disaster, Hurricane Michael,
hovers over Lister’s underwhelming 21st
novel featuring John Jordan, a sheriff’s
investigator in Gulf County, Fla. (after
2018’s Blue Blood). After a teasing opening
in which an unidentified person muses on
finding the perfect murder victim, an
anonymous call to the police leads Jordan
to visit the home of Andrew Irwin, a retired
priest he knows. Irwin is lying dead on
the floor, clad only in his underwear and
cradling a large crucifix, the victim of
antifreeze poisoning. Jordan’s by-the-
book investigation fails to engage as he
searches both for a motive for the crime
and the tipster’s identity. A domestic crisis
involving Jordan’s family distracts from
the case, until the arrival of the hurricane,
which completely dominates the book for
chapters at a time, relegating the murder
to the background. When Lister does return
to it, the solution will disappoint series
fans who have come to expect twists that
are unexpected and plausible. The author
has bitten off more than he can chew.
Agent: Amy Moore-Benson, AMB Literary
Management. (Dec.)Murder for Good
Veronica Heley. Severn, $28.99 (224p)
ISBN 978-0-7278-8902-7
In Heley’s tiresome 20th Ellie Quicke
mystery (after 2018’s Murder by Suggestion),
Ellie’s retired reverend husband, Thomas,
who has a big heart for those in need,
offers to let Hetty, a middle-aged woman
with no home and basic skills, stay with
him and Ellie in their London house until
she gets on her feet. Hetty starts to behave
badly, and when asked to leave, she becomes
dangerously vindictive, including staging
a fake attempted murder and blaming Ellie.
In the midst of the turmoil, Thomas starts
to receive money from estates of recently
deceased people he has never met. After
the sixth generous monetary gift, Thomas
wants to go to the police, but first Ellie
wants to see whether she can unravel the
mystery of their good fortune. Too many
characters spewing angry tirades (including
Diana, Ellie’s obnoxious daughter), a thin
plot, and little action until the final pages
will try the patience of readers not already
invested in the series. This one’s strictly
for series fans. Agent: Juliet Burton, Juliet
Burton Literary (U.K.). (Dec.)Buried
Sue Rovens. Plump Toad, $12 mass market
(224p) ISBN 978-1-7339163-0-1
Rovens’s unsettling story of unsavory
crimes connected with a small-town
funeral home is not for the squeamish.
Gerald Zenith has run the Sommerville
Funeral Home in Foote, Ind., for 14 years,
aided by Bruce Sheffield, “a thirty-year-
old mama’s boy who abided by the cliché
of living in his mother’s basement.” Both
men have abused their positions. Gerald,who keeps two
sets of books,
routinely digs
up graves after
burials and
deposits the
corpses in an
unmarked hole
so that he can
recycle the
coffins. Bruce
sexually abuses
the bodies of dead women brought to
the funeral home. Meanwhile, extreme
hoarder Priscilla Wyatt accumulates pos-
sessions that include body parts unearthed
by her dog. Bruce’s mother, who writes
cozy mysteries with religious-themed
titles such as Stop: In the Name of Jesus, has
a key role to play in the grotesque events
leading to the dramatic denouement.
This is a straightforward cautionary tale
of how the two principals’ sins eventually
catch up with them. Crime novel concepts
don’t come much odder or creepier. (Self-
published.)SF/Fantasy/Horror
Queen of the Unwanted
Jenna Glass. Del Rey, $28 (592p) ISBN 978-0-
525-61837-9
The door-stopper second installment of
Glass’s feminist dystopian trilogy (after The
Women’s War) offers an incisive, if sometimes
slogging, exploration of the aftermath of
abrupt social change. When the Abbess of
Aaltah’s spell swept through all of Seven
Wells, women gained the power to control
their fertility and avenge rapes by rendering
men impotent. Three powerful women
rulers navigate this new world order:
Princess Alysoon of Women’s Well, the
egalitarian rebel community that springs
up around the
new well of
magic; Queen
Ellinsoltah of
Rhozinolm,
whose authority
is challenged by
patriarchy at
home and
abroad; and the
notorious and
ambitious