The Rope Artist

December 1, 2022

In The Lock-Up, Booker Prize winner Banville returns to 1950s Dublin, where pathologist Dr. Quirke and DI St. John Strafford are investigating the murder of a young history scholar when her sister points them to a powerful German family newly arrived in town after World War II (100,000-copy first printing). In Barclay's The Lie Maker, struggling author Jack is offered big money to write false histories for people in the witness protection program and now has the means to find his father, who vanished into the program when Jack was just a child (100,000-copy first printing). Bentley's Tom Clancy Flash Point gives Jack Ryan Jr. a terrorist plot to crack, but it turns out to be part of a larger, grimmer scheme. On the island paradise of Prospera, residents live contentedly until they're warned by a monitor embedded in their forearms that it's time for renewal and board the ferry for the Nursery, but The Ferryman (and some island resisters) begin to suspect that all is not as benevolent as it seems; a stand-alone from Cronin, seven years after he wrapped up his "Passage" series. With Bad, Bad Seymour Brown, New York Times best-selling author Isaacs brings back former FBI agent Corie Geller and her father, a retired NYPD cop, who must solve a cold case to prevent the murder of the crime's only survivor--unassuming professor April Brown, whose father laundered money for the Russian mob. Lawton's Moscow Exile moves from 1950s Washington, DC, where British-born socialite Charlotte has a pack of secrets to pass on to old flame Charlie Leigh Hunt at the British embassy, and 1969, with Joe Wilderness trapped behind the Iron Curtain and the stories converging in Berlin. Maden's Untitled new Cussler adventure brings back Juan Cabrillo and the crew of the Oregon for more fun and games. In Nakamura's latest, two detectives investigate the murder of The Rope Artist--an instructor in kinbaku, a form of rope bondage with both spiritual and sexual overtones--with Togashi finding himself pulled toward his own unorthodox desires and straight-arrow colleague Hayama seeking the truth in a case that's getting out of control. In The 23rd Midnight, Patterson and Paetro team up for another visit with the Women's Murder Club, as someone copycats the methods of a serial killer jailed by Det. Lindsay Boxer and profiled in a best seller by reporter Cindy Thomas, both women's murder clubbers. In multi-award-finalist Pochada's Sing Her Down, the imprisoned Diosmary Sandoval suspects that cellmate Florence "Florida" Baum isn't the innocent victim she claims to be and hounds her relentlessly when both are unexpectedly released (100,000-copy first printing). National Book Award finalist Powers (The Yellow Birds) draws A Line in the Sand with his first thriller, about former Iraqi interpreter Arman Bajalan, working at the Sea Breeze Motel in Norfolk, VA, after having barely survived the assassination attempt that killed his wife and child, who discovers a dead body on the beach (60,000-copy first printing). When her roommate is killed at the first party they throw at their Baltimore-area apartment, Morgan learns that she was the intended victim of the assailant, who steals each target's Identity and then kills her; a million-copy first printing for Roberts. After more than four decades of thrillers reflecting Soviet/Russian events, Smith drops longtime protagonist Arkady Renko in Independence Square in Kyiv, where Renko has gone to find the anti-Putin daughter of an acquaintance. Meanwhile, Renko discovers that he has Parkinson's Disease, as does Smith.

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March 1, 2023
A deep, deeply disturbing dive into Japan's bondage subculture. Before he was beaten to death with an elegant sculpture, Kazunari Yoshikawa was noted as a master of kinbaku--rope artistry, as distinct from rope torture. He made the women he bound at a club and privately feel achingly desired and desirous. Even Maiko Kirita, the escort-turned-hostess who spent two weeks as Yoshikawa's captive, tells police detective Mikiya Togashi how powerful her lover's hold over her was because he always believed "the ropes were in charge." But nothing else about the case seems straightforward. The absence of official records on Yoshikawa indicates that he lived and died under a false name. Ami Ito, the lover who lived with Yoshikawa until she was found hanged six months ago, seems to be doubled with Mari Yamamoto, another sex worker. Even Togashi himself is replaced as detective and narrator by his more forthright colleague Yuichi Hayama, whose account is supplemented by the reminiscences of Yutaka Yamada, who as the mysterious Y served as Yoshikawa's tutor in kinbaku. Detailed step-by-step descriptions of sexual bondage are only the most literal sign of the tangled relationships that bind the characters together. And just when you're convinced that Nakamura, who in an afterword describes his goal as conveying the "sense of a dim light through a veil of fog," has moved decisively from the logistics of kinbaku to its spirituality and metaphysics, he produces a stunning climactic surprise that will make you think of this particular case, and erotic bondage generally, in a whole new way. Spellbinding.

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April 1, 2023
In a Tokyo apartment, detectives Togashi and Hayama discover a man's bludgeoned body and evidence of a missing woman. While the apartment's lease points to Ami Ito as the missing woman, Togashi recognizes the belongings of his unforgettable ex-girlfriend, Maiko Kirita. Togashi acts quickly to hide Kirita's involvement and is rewarded with a rekindled affair once he tracks her down. Shortly after Hayama (whose sharp powers of observation are influenced by a criminal bent) discovers Togashi's misdeeds, the enraptured detective's body is found. Togashi's suspicious death, Kirita's involvement, and a written confession that reveals a tangle of murderous deceptions within the BDSM community create the kind of mystery that stirs Hayama's hidden darkness. As Hayama's investigation delves into the traditional practice of kinbaku, a form of erotic performance art that symbolizes spiritual and psychological freedom, he questions whether it's an inspiration for murder or a vengeful predator's lure. Raw eroticism, untethered justice, unreliable narratives, and psychological twists infuse this complex literary mystery with edgy danger and lingering existential questions.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.