Blurb:

Phoenix, May 6, 1946

At close to midnight in the Union Station baggage room, the air is hot, still, and thick. The eleven forty-five Golden State Limited to Los Angeles is approaching rapidly when the baggage handler, Alfred Brody, notices a stray hound dog sniffing around one of the steamer trunks. The horrific discovery of a body inside the trunk can mean only one thing: there’s a murderer among them.

The young woman was certainly murdered, but who did it, and why? Suspects and motives abound as Private Detective Mason Adler investigates. He soon realizes that nothing, and no one, are what they seem to be as he races to uncover the truth and bring the real murderer to justice without becoming the next victim.

Review

This was the third novel by David S. Pederson. Unlike the other two I read, which featured Heath Barrington as the main character, the protagonist in this novel is Private Detective Mason Adler, a 50-year-old gay detective. The story takes place in 1946 in Phoenix, AZ, where the dead body of a woman is discovered in a trunk at Union Station. What’s interesting about this tale is that it’s inspired by a real-life murder in 1931.

In Murder at Union Station, Mason is hired to investigate the woman’s murder, and we travel with him as he interviews the various witnesses and suspects, trying to piece together the last hours of the woman’s life. The story is full of engaging, lively characters such as his sassy next-door neighbor Lydia and the flamboyant Walter as well Emil, the by-the-book police chief with whom Mason has an interesting — and somewhat contentious — working relationship. There was plenty of comical, witty banter between the characters, which lent a fun touch to the story. I also enjoyed the diversity in the novel, which one doesn’t always find in historical fiction: Mason and his friend Walter were both gay, two of the women in the story were a lesbian couple, the porter who transported the body to the station was a Black man, and one of the suspects was neurodiverse.

It was a lot of fun to unravel the mystery of what happened to the poor woman in the trunk as Mason gathered a plethora of clues from the colorful witnesses. Murder at Union Station is well-written, suspenseful, and smoothly plotted, and it kept me guessing until the big denouement at the end. It’s a fast, enjoyable cozy mystery that I enjoyed. I look forward to reading the first book in the Mason Adler series — Murder on Monte Vista. Recommended!

A huge thank you to Netgalley for providing a review copy of this book.

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Blurb

A rural island community steeped in the mystical superstitions of its founders and haunted by an unsolved murder is upended by the return of the suspected killer in this deeply atmospheric novel.

Emery Blackwood’s life was forever changed on the eve of her high school graduation, when the love of her life, August Salt, was accused of murdering her best friend, Lily. Now, she is doing what her teenage self swore she never would: living a quiet existence among the community that fractured her world in two. She’d once longed to run away with August, eager to escape the misty, remote shores of Saiorse Island and chase new dreams; now, she maintains her late mother’s tea shop and cares for her ailing father. But just as the island, rooted in folklore and tradition, begins to show signs of strange happenings, August returns for the first time in fourteen years and unearths the past that no one wants to remember.

August Salt knows he is not welcome on Saiorse, not after the night that changed everything. As a fire raged on at the Salt family orchard, Lily Morgan was found dead in the dark woods, shaking the bedrock of their tight-knit community and branding August a murderer. When he returns to bury his mother’s ashes, he must confront the people who turned their backs on him and face the one wound from the past that has never healed—Emery. But the town has more than one reason to want August gone, and the emergence of deep betrayals and hidden promises that span generations threatens to reveal the truth behind Lily’s death once and for all.

Evocative and compelling, Spells for Forgetting is a vivid exploration of lost love and the unraveling of a small town and its many secrets.

Review

Spells for Forgetting is an adult mystery/thriller that centers around August Salt, who has returned to his hometown on the mystical Saiorse Island fourteen years after he and his mother hurriedly left following the murder of Lily, one of August’s close friends. Everyone on the island is certain that August was the murderer — everyone except for his childhood sweetheart and the love of his life, Emery.

Though unwelcome on the island, August has returned to bury his mother’s ashes, and his presence on the island has stirred up some long-buried emotions on the part of the residents. Additionally, August and Emery begin to ask some difficult questions and as they do, learn that small towns have secrets — dark secrets as well as long memories, and there are still some around who would prefer that the past remains in the past.

A series of backstories slowly reveals the dramatic circumstances surrounding the events of the night in question and, in so doing, deeply draws the reader into the small-town environment of privilege and deep-rooted family ties, resulting in a spooky and unsettling story. I love stories that take place on isolated, creepy islands, especially ones with a deep, lurking evil in a tight-knit community and this book fit the bill perfectly. It was so haunting and atmospheric that I could vividly picture the creepy island in my mind as I read. The writing is sharp, edgy, and compelling, and I love how the story is told via alternating POVs and timelines, unfolding into a rather suspenseful and intricate tale of scandal, deception, class division, lies, betrayal, violence, and murder.

The spooky vibe makes this the perfect autumn read. So if you’re looking for a creepy mystery chock full of dark family secrets with a touch of magical realism, then it’s worth checking out Spells for Forgetting. Populated with wonderfully complex and empathetic characters, Young’s novel is a twisty tale of legacy and unbreakable bonds with the land. Utterly bewitching!

Thank you to Netgalley for providing a review copy of this book.

Blurb

A record heat wave suffocates remote rural Wisconsin as the local sheriff tracks down a killer hidden in the depths of the community in this atmospheric, race-to-the-finish mystery by the acclaimed author of the Bad Axe County series.

Sheriff Heidi Kick has a dead body on her hands, a homeless young man last seen alive miles from the Bad Axe. Chillingly, the medical examiner confirms what Sheriff Kick has been experiencing in her own reoccurring nightmares of late: the victim was buried alive. As the relentless summer heat bears down and more bodies are discovered, Sheriff Kick also finds herself embroiled in a nasty reelection campaign. These days her detractors call her “Sheriff Mommy”—KICK HER OUT holler the opposition’s campaign signs—and as her family troubles become public, vicious rumors threaten to sway the electorate and derail her investigation.

Enter Vietnam veteran Leroy Fanta, editor-in-chief of the local paper who believes Heidi’s strange case might be tied to a reclusive man writing deranged letters to the opinions section for years. With his heart and liver on their last legs, Fanta drums up his old journalistic instincts in one last effort to help Heidi find a lead in her case, or at least a good story…

With simmering tension that sweats off the page, Bad Moon Rising infuses newsworthy relevance with a page-turning story of crime in America’s heartland, capturing global issues with startling immediacy while entertaining from start to finish.

Review

This is the third book in a series featuring Wisconsin local sheriff Heidi Kick. Each book can be read as a standalone (this is actually the first book in the series that I’ve read).

In Bad Moon Rising, our sheriff is tasked with solving the murder of a young homeless man who was apparently buried alive. This isn’t the first murder of this type to occur in the community. A local newspaperman, Leroy Fanta, suspects that the crimes may be connected to a somewhat “unhinged” reader of the newspaper who has been sending angry and disturbing letters to the editor for years. He decides to investigate to help the sheriff with the case and ends up unearthing some pretty dark secrets in the process. The evil at play in the town was quite surprising.

It’s also worth mentioning that Heidi is in the midst of a reelection campaign that has gotten quite nasty, with her nemesis resorting to all sorts of unseemly tactics to oust the sheriff.

I found this book to be utterly captivating, with a gripping mystery to solve. The author does a masterful job of layering on the mysteries until we’re almost frantically turning the pages, impatient to find out what the hell is going on. The suspense is unrelenting to the very end. I also found the characterization in this book to be really powerful. There is no shortage of quirky characters, all of whom add to the overall atmosphere of the narrative and play an essential part in the development of the plot.

I was glued to my seat as I immersed myself in this mind-blowing police procedural that takes the reader down a dark and twisty path and then totally blows your mind with a jaw-dropping conclusion. All in all, I found Bad Moon Rising to be tense, unsettling, a tad creepy, and it kept me guessing till the very end. I plan on picking up the other books in this series as I grew pretty attached to Sheriff Kick by the end of the story.

This book will be released on June 29, 2021.

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