Old friends reconnect after murder accusation
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Kia Abdullah isn’t a household name, but it probably should be.
What Happens in the Dark (HQ, 400 pages, $25) is Abdullah’s eighth novel, the story of two childhood friends who reunite as adults under difficult circumstances. Lily Astor is a popular television host accused of murder; Safa Saleem is a disgraced newspaper reporter who sees a chance to turn her professional life around. Neither can anticipate how her life will actually change.
Abdullah’s novels feature carefully drawn, abundantly human characters. She tackles some serious themes — racism, violence against women, the malleability of truth — but doesn’t lecture the reader and never lets the story get overwhelmingly dark. If you’ve never read a novel by this first-rate storyteller, now’s your chance.
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If you’re a fan of the Scream movies (or if you just like a really good book about moviemaking), you’ll want to read Ashley Cullins’ Your Favorite Scary Movie: How the Scream Films Rewrote the Rules of Horror (Plum, 352 pages, $30).
Beginning more than 30 years ago — when Kevin Williamson wrote a script called Scary Movie — through the production of 1996’s Scream, and right up to the preproduction stages of Scream 7 (2026), the book is a thrilling ride through the history of one of horror’s most popular series.
Cullins interviewed pretty much everybody you can think of for this detailed history — not just cast and crew, but those who just love them a lot — legendary filmmaker John Carpenter, for example, and director Edgar Wright. Horror icon Wes Craven, who directed the first four Scream movies, passed away in 2015 and this book is in part a tribute to him. But mostly it’s a lively, hugely entertaining story of how movies get made.
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In 2006, John Grisham published An Innocent Man, about a former baseball player who was railroaded for a murder he didn’t commit.
In his first book-length work of non-fiction since then, Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions (Vintage, 368 pages, $25, Grisham and co-author Jim McClosky write about 10 blatant miscarriages of justice. McClosky is the founder of Centurion, which for four decades has been dedicated to freeing people who were wrongly convicted and the stories in this book will boggle your mind.
As we read about people lied to by the police, about coerced confessions and manufactured evidence, about the ludicrous lengths authorities will go to build a case (for example, claiming seven people, some of whom don’t know each other, conspired to commit a murder), we get angry — and that’s the point. The authors want us to be angry. They want us to feel the outage and heartbreak of these innocent people. And they succeed, spectacularly.
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Transport yourself back in time to June 1916. It feels like the Great War will never end. Dr. John Watson, knee-deep in the blood of wounded and dying soldiers, hasn’t thought of his old friend Sherlock Holmes in a long time. Imagine his surprise when Sherlock knocks on his door and tells him a story so wild that Watson can scarcely believe it. But it’s true: Germany has a secret plan to win the war. And only Holmes and Watson can stop it.
Nicholas Meyer’s Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell (Penzler Publishers, 288 pages, $24) is a wonderful novel. Meyer published the classic The Seven-Per-Cent Solution in 1974; since then he’s written several Holmes pastiches, each of them as delightful as the last. Meyer, who’s also directed some movies (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Time After Time), brings Holmes and Watson vividly to life, never imitating Arthur Conan Doyle, yet making us feel as though we have slipped back into Holmes’s world.
There are dozens of Holmes novels out there, of various quality; Meyer’s are among the very best of them.
If you’re a Sherlock Holmes fan, you must read this one.
Halifax freelancer David Pitt’s column appears the first weekend of every month. You can follow him on Bluesky at @bookman.bsky.social.