The Key to Deceit

December 1, 2021

In a series starter from the ever-popular Armstrong, homicide detective Mallory is in 2019 Edinburgh when she experiences A Rip Through Time and winds up in one of the city's alleyways in 1869, inhabiting the body of strangled-if-not-quite-dead housemaid Catriona Thomson and soon hunting for a killer (50,000-copy first printing). In Atherton's Aunt Dimity and the Enchanted Cottage, the redoubtable sleuth and her English-village neighbors fail in their attempt to befriend standoffish newcomer Crispin Windle until they discover the ruins of a Victorian woolen mill--and the graves of children who worked there, whom they seek to identify (30,000-copy first printing; originally scheduled for July 2021). In Nonna Maria and the Case of the Missing Bride, crusty but beloved widow Nonna Maria--who lives on the isle of Ischia in the Gulf of Naples and was inspired by the No. 1 New York Times best-selling Carcaterra's grandmother--intervenes when a young bride-to-be declares that she's afraid of her fianc�. In Haines's Lady of Bones, Mississippi-based Sarah Booth Delaney of the Delaney Detective Agency is attending a party alit with jack-o-lanterns when she's approached by a woman seeking her vanished daughter, who has been investigating the disappearance of young women in New Orleans every Halloween for the last five years (40,000-copy first printing). The internationally best-selling author of the "Dark Iceland" and "Hulda" series, J�nasson sets his new standalone during an Icelandic blizzard, with four frantic friends sheltering in an abandoned hunting lodge and facing a reignited tragedy that likely makes them wish they were all Outside (50,000-copy first printing). In Klingborg's Wild Prey, Inspector Lu Fei of the Chinese Police travels to a remote region of Myanmar to find a missing 15-year-old girl in a case involving the illegal trafficking of exotic animals (50,000-copy first printing). In Robert B. Parker's Revenge Tour, Lupica assigns PI Sunny Randall the thankless task of investigating actress friend Melanie Joan Hall when Melanie's manager turns up dead, her bank account looks to be wiped out, and details of her past suddenly seem more imagined than real. In Paretsky's Overboard, a seriously injured teenage girl discovered by V.I. Warshawski on Lake Michigan's rocky shore subsequently vanishes from the hospital, and the iconic detective must chase down a monstrous conspiracy with pandemic-ridden Chicago as backdrop (100,000-copy first printing). Pursuing a massive drugs-and-weapons shipment being shepherded across the U.S.-Mexican border by former cops with the warning "You talk, you die" written on their bodies, Patterson/Paetro stalwart Sgt. Lindsay Boxer suddenly has 22 Seconds to decide what her fate will be. Second in the new series from librarian Weaver, who launched her writing career with the delightful Amory Ames mysteries, The Key to Deceit has breaker-and-enterer Ellie McDonnell again approached by stuffed-shirt good-guy Major Ramsey in World War II London: he wants her to discover which side the female spy found bobbing in the Thames was on (40,000-copy first printing).

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2022
It's 1940 in London, and a family of locksmiths with a sideline in theft pulls off another job for the Crown. When Electra McDonnell and her family got caught trying to steal jewels, their choice was prison or working for the handsome, enigmatic Major Ramsey. Ellie's attracted to the dashing aristocrat, but so far their relationship has remained professional and sometimes antagonistic. Ramsey wants Ellie's Uncle Mick but has to settle for Ellie when he needs to remove a locked bracelet from the arm of a woman found dead in the Thames. Unlocking the bracelet is easy, and Ellie's able to provide some insight into Myra Fields' station in life from her clothing. A search reveals a camera in the bracelet, a clock key, and a bag of jewels hidden in the lining of a sable coat. Ellie's first job with Ramsey--in A Peculiar Combination (2021)--gave her a taste for danger, and she's more than willing to help uncover an espionage ring that's taking photos of juicy targets for the Germans. To Ramsey's dismay, Ellie calls on family friend and romantic interest Felix Lacey for help with a crooked pawnshop owner. Family contacts help track down the source of the jewels and lead to a boardinghouse where Myra lived. Ellie, with Ramsey masquerading as her husband, pretends to be Myra's cousin in order to look for clues. Once the German bombing commences, they push even harder to roll up the dangerous spy ring even as Ellie continues to look into her mother's conviction for murdering her father, a crime she denied to the day she died. Competing romances, slippery spies, and the horrors of the Blitz combine in an exciting mystery/adventure.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from March 14, 2022
Set during the early days of the Battle of Britain, Edgar finalist Weaver’s excellent sequel to 2021’s A Peculiar Combination continues the adventures of Electra “Ellie” McDonnell and her uncle Mick, who have eschewed safe cracking in favor of more legitimate work. When a young woman’s body washes up on the banks of the Thames with a bracelet locked to her wrist, Ellie is recruited by Major Ramsey, an impassive and exceedingly handsome British intelligence officer, to remove the bracelet from the corpse’s wrist. Together, Ellie and the major soon realize the dead woman was working as a spy for the Germans. Meanwhile, Ellie works with Felix Lacey, a longtime friend and possible romantic partner, to undercover the secrets behind Ellie’s mother’s decades-old conviction for murder. Weaver does a sensational job of evoking 1940 London and populates the story with endearing characters, none more so than Ellie, who’s gutsy, smart, and completely unwilling to be outmaneuvered or left behind when danger presents itself. Readers will hope to see a lot more of Ellie. Agent: Ann Collette, Rees Literary.

Starred review from April 15, 2022
"Safecracking for King and Country" is the motto of reformed safecracker/locksmith/thief Ellie McDonnell, who has been recruited (under threat of imprisonment) by British military intelligence during WWII and assigned to break open any container that might hold Nazi secrets. In this thoroughly ingenious blend of rom-com and spy cozy, Ellie, who was introduced, along with her locksmith uncle, in A Peculiar Combination (2021), works largely solo here, under orders from a man to whom she's desperately attracted, the devastatingly handsome and excruciatingly proper Major Ramsey. The lock that Ellie is under orders to pick is on a bracelet on the arm of a drowned woman, who either leaped or was pushed into the Thames. Ellie's examination of the victim's bracelet and belongings yields a spying device and a key to a wind-up clock. As Ellie and Major Ramsey investigate a possible spy ring, using shadowing, impersonation, and Ellie's contacts in the London underworld, the fast-paced plot alternates between scary and comic. Ellie narrates, in a witty, matter-of-fact way, filling us in about picking locks, using her contacts with shady antiques dealers and fences to find the mysterious clock, and coping with the myriad privations of living in London during the war. Ellie is wonderfully resourceful and divinely funny. Let's hope this expertise-and-romance-filled series continues for a very long time.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.