Three

May 4, 2020
Mishani (the Avraham Avraham series) displays a superior gift for psychological suspense in this taut and twisty standalone. Orna Azran lives in Holon, Israel, with her nine-year-old son, Eran, and is still coming to terms with the end of her marriage to Ronen. A teacher, Orna works tirelessly to support her family and to help Eran, who is socially awkward, to weather the absence of his father; Ronen, who has moved to Nepal and remarried, can’t even be relied upon to wish Eran a happy birthday. Orna finds a change of pace from her exhausting, self-sacrificing routine after she meets Gil on a dating website for divorced singles. Their relationship develops slowly, partly due to her own ambivalence about becoming intimate again, and partly because of increasingly troubling signs that Gil is not who he says he is. Things take an unexpectedly dark turn before veering in a direction few will anticipate, but which pays off in the end. Mishani imbues his flawed, plausibly-drawn characters with a deep melancholy, spinning the noirish elements into a deeply satisfying conclusion. Mishani demonstrates a real flair for literary crime fiction.

April 18, 2022
Friendship is complicated in Perrin’s (Fresh Water for Flowers) enticing exploration of a trio who meet on the first day of fifth grade and remain inseparable. Adrien Bobin, Etienne Beaulieu, and Nina Beau grow up in 1980s Le Comelle, France, where they become obsessed with movies and music, fantasize about leaving home, and are bound by two tragic events. As teens, they’re certain their new wave band will give them artistic, intellectual, and personal freedom, but heartbreak strikes when Nina’s mail carrier grandfather, beloved by the friends, is struck and killed by a van. In 2017, a body discovered submerged in a car in a nearby sand quarry may be that of a schoolmate, Clothilde Marais, who went missing at 18. Perrin wily withholds facts about the deaths through much of the novel, along with the secret identity of a freelance journalist narrator, a supposed outsider with an ill-defined suspicious past who seems to know more than is likely about the group. The numerous twists and eye-opening revelations will keep readers riveted. This offers a bounty of rewards.