Five new mysteries plumb the past for clues to the present

The past, and how its tentacles can reach into the future, lies at the heart of many a mystery. In five new works, past secrets propel present crimes, threatening the new lives that protagonists are fighting hard to create.

One of my rules as a reader: If a character is going to mutter darkly for chapters on end about the Big Secret in their past, it needs to pay off. As far as I’m concerned, the form reached its apotheosis in Stella Gibbons’ classic satire “Cold Comfort Farm,” with the immortal cry, “I saw something nasty in the woodshed!” I am pleased to report that the writers here all understand the stakes.

Deceit in an Irish village

Tana French uses the temperatures of a scorching heat wave to stretch the tension – and mystery genre conventions – like taffy in “The Hunter,” her follow-up to “The Searcher.” Both novels are inextricably woven together, and it is impossible to review the second without referring to the events in the first. So be warned: Spoilers ahead!

“The Hunter” returns to the watchful and ethically murky Irish village of Ardnakelty, where retired Chicago cop Cal Hooper has crafted a new family for himself with veterinarian Lena and Trey, the teen he teaches carpentry and ethics. Cal handles his neighbors warily – as one should with dangerous materials – and confines his impulses to fix things to broken objects. Then Trey’s missing father brings home an English millionaire and tries to sell the villagers on what he claims is a promising scam: “There’s gold in them thar hills.” Trey, meanwhile, sees a chance for revenge against the men who buried her beloved brother in a peat bog. “The Hunter” is an unrepentedly slow burn. As the folksy charm of multiple characters wears thin, the novel exposes layers of malevolence and deceit. Who is going to die isn’t clear until halfway through, but the real question that will keep readers gripped is, can Cal and Lena save Trey from the course she’s embarked upon? The full emotional impact of her latest novel comes from readers having already learned to care about the characters in the first. And why deny yourself the pleasure of French at her best? 

Secrets, some classified

There may be people who can resist sisters whose motto comes from Don Marquis’ “Archy and Mehitabel,” but I am not one of them. “Toujours gai, Archie!” Penny and Josephine Williamson advise their beloved nephew in “The Excitements” by CJ Wray. Learning to remain stalwartly happy amid a downpour of sorrows is an acquired skill that they strive to teach Archie, along with fly-fishing, camping, and the vanished martial art of Defendu.

Now in their 90s, the World War II veterans are headed to France, with Archie in tow, to receive the Legion of Honor medal. “The Excitements” is not actually a mystery, but I’m cheating and including it here because it’s too delightful for readers to miss. And there is plenty of crime and at least one murder. Both Josephine and Penny are sitting on secrets – some covered by Britain’s Official Secrets Act, and some not. The ending requires much suspension of disbelief, but by then readers will be happy to believe the Williamson sisters capable of anything.

Preordained murder

As readers of British cozy mysteries know, a village fete is never a safe place to let down your guard. In “How To Solve Your Own Murder” by Kristen Perrin, a fortuneteller predicts teenager Frances Adams’ murder: “Your future contains dry bones,” the inauspicious reading begins. Frances spends the rest of her life trying to forestall that event – only to be found dead in her study after summoning her grandniece Annie to hear her will. Frances kept decades of research in the form of files and journals, and Annie, a would-be mystery writer, feels that she has the tools to put the clues together. The plot has a nice sense of propulsion, the mystery definitely captures interest, and Perrin is a smooth writer. But the past and the present never fully come together – the generous-hearted teen morphing into a paranoid lady-of-the-manor occurs mostly off the page. And Annie, a friendly presence but hapless sleuth, commits one of the genre’s chief blunders: confronting a potential murderer by herself. Unless your great-aunts have trained you in the World War II art of Defendu, please leave this to the professionals.

Mysterious portrait 

An inheritance sends Jo Jones to the British countryside in “The Framed Women of Ardemore House” by Brandy Schillace. As an editor who is autistic and hyperlexic, she needs a reset and a job after her ex cheated on her, then cheated her. Nursing her dying mother, Jo is too tired to fight back. Then she inherits the family estate in North Yorkshire – a moldering pile of back taxes, rotting books, and a mysterious portrait of a lady, which promptly vanishes. Next, the sleazy caretaker is found dead, and outsider Jo finds herself considered a convenient suspect by the local constabulary. As Jo puts it, reading is her superpower, so she starts researching everything she can about Ardemore House and the missing painting, convinced the past will help clear her of suspicion. 

Jo’s love of words and Gothic literature and her card catalog of a brain make her a sharp-witted protagonist. “Mostly it’s just very crowded up here. And sometimes lonely,” she explains about her inability to forget that makes it possible for her to see connections others miss. “Plus, even though I never forget things, others do. Often, I’m left living in a memory that has vanished for other people.” Schillace clearly loves the written word as much as her heroine, and “The Framed Women of Ardemore House” offers both gorgeous bits of Yorkshire lexicography and a thoughtful mystery that does justice to generations of women who see life differently.

Making a killing in antiques

In C.L. Miller’s “The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder,” Freya Lockwood’s London home is being sold out from under her by her wretched ex-husband. Then she gets a message from her estranged mentor asking for her help – only to find he’s died in a fall. 

Arthur Crockleford was ostensibly the owner of an antiques shop, but it was a front for his real business: a detective agency for the antiques world. Arthur had helped Freya’s Aunt Carole raise her after the child’s parents died in a fire. 

Arthur showed the heartbroken girl a porcelain plate repaired with kintsugi, the Japanese art of fixing broken things with gold. “This plate is different than before, but it’s still precious,” Arthur tells Freya. “Most of us have been broken in one way or another. We don’t need to hide the scars, for they make us who we are.” 

Freya hadn’t seen Arthur since events in Cairo sundered their relationship irreparably, but Arthur’s death has her resurrecting skills she hasn’t used in two decades. This includes an unerring eye for the old and precious and ... the martial art of Krav Maga. (That last feels more than a touch tacked on, as do references to Freya having been a real-life Lara Croft back in the day.) Aunt Carole’s glamour, however, is utterly unforced. Miller comes by her knowledge of antiques through her mother, the late Judith Miller, a star of the BBC’s “Antiques Roadshow.” 

Arthur’s aphorisms, which headline each chapter, vary in quality, but the best come from Miller’s mom, such as “To find the best deal at an antiques fair always turn left, because everyone else always turns right.”