WWW.PUBLISHERSWEEKLY.COM 49Review_FICTION
Gates provides loads of eccentric and
amusing suspects, shifting motives for the
theft and for the murder, and a surprising
solution to the mystery contained in the
map. Cozy fans looking for good, fast-
paced fun will be rewarded. Agent: Kim
Lionetti, BookEnds Literary. (Oct.)
Beyond a Reasonable Stout
Ellie Alexander. Minotaur, $26 (288p)
ISBN 978-1-250-20575-9
In Alexander’s refreshing third mystery
featuring brewmaster Sloan Krause (after
2018’s The Pint of No Return), Oktoberfest
is over, and the residents of the quaint
German-themed town of Leavenworth,
Wash., are getting ready for the winter
tourist season and the upcoming local elec-
tion. City councilman Kristopher Cooper
is running for reelection on a platform of
prohibition, which would shut down the
town’s craft beer breweries, its main
source of income. One night, Kristopher
and April Ablin, the obnoxious town
gossip, have a loud argument; the next
morning, the councilman is found stabbed
to death in April’s office. As the number
one suspect, April asks Sloan to help prove
her innocence. The list of suspects grows
as Sloan uncovers evidence that Kristopher
was blackmailing townspeople for votes.
Meanwhile, Sloan, who never knew her
parents, receives a frightening cryptic
message about her parents’ true identity.
Distinctive characters and fun anecdotes
about beer and brewing help make this a
winner. Readers will want to keep coming
back for more. (Oct.)
★ Little Voices
Vanessa Lillie. Thomas & Mercer, $15.95
trade paper (384p) ISBN 978-1-5420-9226-5
At the start of Lillie’s impressive debut,
seven months’ pregnant Devon Burges is
rushed to a Providence, R.I., hospital with
a ripped placenta,
the survival of
herself and her
baby in doubt.
Just before
undergoing a
C-section,
Devon hears on
the radio that
her friend
Belina Cabrala
was found mur-
dered in Swan Point Cemetery. Two months
later, after leaving the hospital with her
baby, Devon turns single-mindedly to
finding Belina’s killer, especially after
learning that a friend of Devon’s, Alec
Mather, is the prime suspect. Jack, Devon’s
husband, begs her not to pursue the matter.
He’s concerned because while Devon was
working as a prosecutor of sex crimes and
domestic violence in Washington, D.C.,
she was nearly disbarred, having become
so involved with her cases that she began
hearing voices and blacking out. Jack and
Devon moved to Providence precisely to
escape that pressure. Some incident from
Devon’s past may be triggering the stress
Devon feels as she delves into the murder.
Along the way to the shocking ending,
Devon learns that Alec committed illegal
acts and associated with disreputable
people. This superb psychological thriller
is hard to put down. Agent: Victoria
Sanders, Victoria Sanders and Assoc. (Oct.)High Stakes:
A Knight and Devlin Novel
John F. Dobbyn. Oceanview, $26.95 (320p)
ISBN 978-1-60809-355-7
Dobbyn’s pedestrian sixth Knight and
Devlin novel (after 2016’s Fatal Odds)
takes lawyer Michael Knight from Boston
to Romania. When Knight wins a car
theft case defending Danny Liu, the
young man’s father, the head of the
Chinese Merchants’ Association, invites
Knight to dinner and offers him an all-
expenses-paid vacation at a spa in the
Carpathian Mountains. All he has to do
in return is bring back a priceless
Stradivarius violin, to be found at a violin
shop near the resort, for the Boston
Symphony concert master. Despite some
misgivings, Knight agrees. Once in
Romania, he becomes the target of
Russian gangs, the Chinese Tong, and
dodgy Romanians. What he wasn’t told
by the grateful Mr. Liu is that the violin
may hold the key to the whereabouts of a
fabulous treasure amassed by Vlad the
Impaler. Knight’s senior law partner, Lex
Devlin, and Boston deputy district
attorney Billy Coyne lend a hand. Dobbyn
offers no surprises, no wit, and no pro-
found depth of feeling. This is for those
who like action-packed escapist fiction,
spiced with a dash of Dracula lore. (Oct.)Fire Trap
Bob Kroll. ECW, $14.95 trade paper (296p)
ISBN 978-1-77041-489-1
Kroll’s uneven third and final T.J.
Peterson mystery (after 2017’s The Hell of
It All) plunges the reader into the world
of hardcore porn and other ugliness that
lives on the dark web. Despite his having
been thrown off the Halifax, Nova Scotia,
PD, Peterson, a barely reformed drunk
who tries to avoid the tormenting texts
from his drug-addicted daughter, goes on
a search for Britney Comer, the missing
journalist daughter of an old friend.
Britney has
disappeared
and is being
tortured—with
the video evi-
dence finding
its way to
Peterson—
following her
request to meet
with her dad, a
highly placed
government official who deals with being
blackmailed by committing suicide. A
wealth of unsavory aspects of Peterson’s
past and people he’s connected to surfaces
in the process. But the overload of wick-
edness and depravity feels gratuitous,
and characters come across as caricatures:
the hacker girl, the psycho torturer, the
drugged daughter. In a crime novel that
reads like a morality tale—preaching that
one reaps what one sows—the redeeming
factor is the uneasy sense of closure at the
end, along with a thin shred of hope. This
one’s strictly for series fans. (Oct.)Blood Sugar
Daniel Kraus. Hard Case Crime, $9.95 trade
paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-78909-193-9
When kids come trick-or-treating
down Yellow Street, the disgruntled, slov-
enly Robbie Glinton intends to lace the
Halloween candy with poison and razor
blades in this meandering excursion into
hoarder noir from Kraus (who wrote The
Shape of Water with Guillermo del Toro).
Robbie enlists kids who hang out in his
decaying home in the project. The prin-
cipal narrator, Jody, speaks in a language
distinctly his own: “Todays getting real.
Realer than any day previous. Robbies
made plans in the past but nothing this