The Summer Guests, by Tess Geritsen.

 

            Summer guests:  a euphemism for the thousands of summer visitors that pour into the state of Maine every year when the weather warms up, and acting-police-chief Jo Thibodeau expects the usual minor dust-ups with the vacation crowds that descend on the little town of Purity – traffic offences, offensive behaviour, drunkenness;  the usual, except on a larger scale.  Well, she’s ready for the ‘guests’ in Ms Gerritsen’s second book of the Martini Club series, but she’s still not ready to welcome into her confidence the members of the Martini Club, a group of retired CIA intelligence officers – with nothing better to do than meddle with perfectly legitimate investigations and seemingly always arriving at conclusions ( and destinations!) before she does.  It does absolutely nothing for her confidence to be upstaged – especially when a young girl, a summer guest goes missing, and all evidence points to an elderly man who gave her a lift back to her house by Maiden Pond.  Luther Yount doesn’t seem to have a water-tight alibi either, seemingly evasive about his destination.  Case solved, except that the young girl is still missing.

            Unfortunately for Jo, Luther is the admired and trusted neighbour of Maggie Bird, chicken farmer and former crack CIA agent:  if Jo will only bend the rules a little and allow her to see Luther in his holding cell, she’s pretty sure she’ll find out what really happened.  Which she does, and it’s not long before events require a search of Maiden Pond, revealing a woman’s skeleton which has been there for a considerable time.

            Suddenly, in the space of a week, Jo’s Summer Guest schedule has been blitzed:  she is forced to rely on the doubtful services of a State Detective with whom she does not get along, (he doesn’t believe that women can function in positions of responsibility) and whether she likes it or not, she realises that the Martini Club, for all their pretence at suggesting lofty titles for their ‘Book Club’ – which seems to be an excuse to consume copious amounts of alcohol – they also have a far-reaching recall of their former talents.     

            Ms Gerritsen keeps the action moving along at a satisfyingly furious pace with plenty of plot twists and turns, and her minor characters are, as always, beautifully drawn – and she knows her environment so well, as she and her husband had medical practices in Maine before she became a full-time writer:  everything has the ring of authenticity here, and The Summer Guest’s Unputdownability score is 100%.  FIVE STARS.   

 

The Girl in Cell A, by Vaseem Khan.

         

          Orianna Negi is the notorious dweller of Cell A, convicted at 17 of killing her wealthy father – because she was found unconscious by his body, next to  a shotgun that had blown his head nearly off.  Her fingerprints were all over the weapon and gunshot residue was on her clothes.  An open-and-shut case – but was it?  The advent of the internet, chat shows, podcasts et al has made her a celebrity, because she doesn’t remember the actual crime;  she has perfect recall up until the killing itself, but not a single memory exists of The Deed:  now she is 35 and eligible for parole after a lot of counselling to see if she is ready to deal with the outside world – and she is, for Orianna is convinced she didn’t kill her father (even though he deserved it!) and wants to return to Eden Falls, the small town where she grew up to prove her innocence once and for all.

            Unsurprisingly, she encounters a lot of hostility:  the good townspeople of Eden Falls don’t want a convicted murderer in their midst, particularly one of her pedigree – her mother was housekeeper to the Wyclerc family, the local mine owners and major employers of the area;  she had a reputation as the local girl to go to for a good time – which one of the Wyclerc sons availed himself of every now and then, until the inevitable happened, followed by Orianna’s birth and lonely upbringing in the Big House.  She had no knowledge of her father’s identity until the day he died – but everyone else in the family knows, including her grandfather Amos, who didn’t acknowledge the family relationship until she returned to Eden Falls to such hatred that he insists that for her own safety she stay in the Big House – no longer run by Orianna’s mother who has since died in mysterious circumstances – ‘Accidental Death’ is the official term, but Orianna wants no help from anybody, particularly a family that ignored and rejected her.  She’ll take her chances without them, and expose who really murdered her worthless father.

            This is Vaseem Khan’s first psychological thriller, as he tells us at the end of the book;  it’s the first set outside India, first first-person narrative – so many firsts, but what a success!  Plot twists and turns come thick and fast, and all the characters are completely convincing, in fact it’s hard to believe that he hasn’t a long list of thrillers to his name, such is his ease in the genre.  My only grizzle is that you’ll need strong wrists to read this;  it stretches to 574 pages – not easy for late-night ‘My God, what’s going to happen next!’ readers (me), but totally worth all the yawns the next day.  FIVE STARS.