Time-travelling mother aims to stop son from killing
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/03/2025 (392 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Gillian McAllister’s Wrong Place Wrong Time (Morrow, 384 pages, $13) begins with a shock: Jen watches her teenaged son, Todd, stab a man to death.
He’s taken into police custody, but when Jen awakes the next morning, he’s back at home. And, apparently, neither he nor her husband know anything about a stabbing last night.
Finally Jen figures out what’s going on: today isn’t today — it’s yesterday. Todd hasn’t stabbed anybody yet.
It gets weirder: as the story moves along, Jen continues to wake up in the past, farther and farther back. Once she accepts this bizarre reality, she wonders: can she somehow find out why Todd killed this stranger and keep it from happening?
McAllister has written a string of fine thrillers; this is by far her best. It’s also her riskiest: this is a story that, if you look at it really closely, should not have worked. But it does. Brilliantly.
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Alex Hay’s The Housekeepers (2023) is the hugely entertaining story of a woman who gets revenge on a former employer by cleaning out his entire house — while he’s hosting a ritzy party.
Hay’s new novel The Queen of Fives (Graydon House, 384 pages, $25) isn’t a sequel, but it’s a perfect companion piece. It too is set in London around the turn of the 20th century, and it too features a female con artist: this time it’s Quinn le Blanc, who’s planning to marry a duke so she can take his fortune.
As he did in The Housekeepers, Hay focuses on the small, precise details of the scheme: Quinn building herself a fake identity, finding just the right victim, working the con. But there’s something Quinn doesn’t know: her intended victim isn’t quite who she thinks he is — and his family has secrets they’ll do anything to keep hidden.
If you liked The Housekeepers, or if you simply enjoy a good caper story, you’ll love The Queen of Fives.
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Here’s a timely thriller from Joseph Finder, the author of the excellent Paranoia and Killer Instinct (among other fine thrillers).
The Oligarch’s Daughter (HarperCollins, 448 pages, $25) begins with a man in danger: Paul Brightman discovers that old enemies have found him. Once again, after years of relative peace, he’s running for his life.
We jump back in time, then, to half a dozen years earlier, when Paul was a Wall Street wizard who fell in love with a beautiful Russian photographer.
When Tatyana’s father, a powerful oligarch, takes an interest in Paul, he’s flattered — at first. Soon, though, he begins to wonder whether the man has a darker side.
Finder takes an interesting approach to the story: we know from the get-go that things will not go well for Paul and Tatyana, but we don’t know how badly things will go.
The answer: very badly indeed.
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Do you know Grady Hendrix? If you’re a horror fan, you ought to.
Hendrix’s first novel, Horrorstor (2014), was set in a big-box, Ikea-style furniture store; the book was designed to look like a furniture-store catalogue. My Best Friend’s Exorcism (2016) is a loving tribute to 1980s-style horror movies.
His latest, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls (Berkley, 496 pages, $26), is a tribute to the pulp-style horror stories that came out of the early ’70s.
Neva is pregnant. She’s 15 years old and in Alabama in 1970, it’s not acceptable to be teenaged and pregnant. Her parents ship her off to Florida, where she can give birth in secrecy, far away from her humiliated family. It’s a terrible place run by horrible, cruel people.
Neva is miserable — until the girls get their hands on a very special book. And they learn that revenge can be oh so sweet.
Frightening but also tender and funny, this is another crowd-pleaser from a master of the horror genre.
Halifax freelancer David Pitt’s column appears the first weekend of every month. You can follow him on X at @bookfella.