Such a Clever Girl by Darby Kane

 Such a Clever Girl by Darby Kane is a gripping domestic thriller. In the prologue, Kane plunges readers into a chilling tableau: the Tanner family of four has vanished—dinner half-eaten, a bloodstain by the door, their bookstore in Sleepy Hollow, New York, on fire. Fifteen years later, the Tanner’s presumed-dead daughter, Aubrey, returns at just the moment an emergency court hearing is taking place regarding the estate of her late grandfather Xavier Tanner, sparking an unlikely alliance of three of the women in the room who hold long-buried secrets.

The courtroom scene is narrated by Stella, a psychologist whose mother Isabel is Xavier’s niece. Marni Richards is an elementary school teacher who suffers with great anxiety. Hanno Sato is the owner of the local coffee shop. In one way or another, each woman has a connection with the Tanners.

The story of what happened on the day the Tanners disappeared is rolled out with  tension-ratcheting momentum as each woman takes the stage briefly in the telling of what happened that day. However, the multiple point of view structure of the thriller with all four women telling the story is a challenge to readers trying to keep track of so many voices.

Aubrey challengers and threatens Stella, Marni, and Hanna with what she knows and what she thinks the role of each woman was on the day the Tanners disappeared. Before the story reaches its conclusions, one of the women will be questioned by the police, another will be caught up in the terror involving a son who has gone missing, and the third will be wrecked by the reveal of all the details about what happened 15 years ago.

Darby Kane is the pseudonym of HelenKay Dimon a former trial attorney and an award-winning romantic suspense author. A native of Pennsylvania, Dimon lives in California.

 

 

Dead Man Blues

 Author Silas House, writing under the pseudonym S.D. House, steps away from his usual Southern story telling to pen the book he has said he wants to read: a murder mystery called Dead Man Blues. Set in the 1950s in the fictional tiny town of Shady Grove on the Kentucky-Tennessee border, Dave Hendricks has fallen about as far as a man can fall: he has lost his wife, his best friend, his job, and his reputation.

Left with only a houseboat to call home and his loyal dog, he works odd jobs in the marina where he rents space for his boat, drinks Jameson, and listens to the blues. A scream across the lake leads him to a fishing camp where someone has been murdered. Once a sheriff for his small town, his investigative instincts kick in as he surveys the murder scene before the current sheriff, his former best friend, arrives.

Even though the sheriff has betrayed Dave, he calls on Dave to help investigate the murder for the good of the community. Dave agrees to work along with, not for, the sheriff to find the killer who slashed and stabbed his victim.

When a second body is discovered—this one floating in Cedar Lake--the townsfolk are fearful of a killer in their community. Dave begins to piece together the puzzle about the two dead men, their connection to each other, and their connection to the community, as he closes in on the murderer.

House said on his Facebook page: “I’ve always wanted to write a murder mystery and now I have, under a slight pseudonym to differentiate this commercial work from my literary writing.”

He is known throughout the South as a quintessential person of letters: a novelist, poet, music journalist, environmental activist, and columnist. He served as the  Poet Laureate of Kentucky from 2023-2024. His trilogy of Clay’s Quilt, A Parchment of Leaves, and The Coal Tattoo are not to be missed by fans of Southern fiction. He lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

 

My review will be posted on Goodreads, Instagram, and Facebook starting August 5, 2025.

I would like to thank Crooked Lane Books and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

 

The Proving Ground by Michael Connelly

 The eighth book in Michael Connelly’s Lincoln Lawyer series, The Proving Ground pits Mickey Haller against the Artificial Intelligence industry when a teenager follows a command from a chatbot that tells him that it is okay to murder his ex-girlfriend. Leaving criminal law behind, Haller takes on the civil suit of Brenda Randolph, mother of the victim Rebecca, opposing TidalwAIv Technologies.

 

TidalwAIv has a lot at stake as it is looking for one of the bigger tech companies to gobble it up with its investors coming out billions ahead. On the other hand, Brenda wants three things from the company: accountability, action, and apology; the company just wants to offer a big payoff for a signed non-disclosure statement.

 

As the trial is about to begin, the Mason brothers, lawyers of record for TidalwAIv, have been playing loose with the discovery material offered to Haller, who believes the real evidence is hidden in all the redactions of the documents. Jack McEvoy, a journalist who wants to write a book about the case when it reaches its conclusion, signs on to work through the tons of printed discovery materials, where his research reveals a key witness who is fearful about testifying.

 

Before the trial begins, Aaron Colton’s parents, Bruce and Trisha, want to sue TidalwAIv, for turning their son into a killer. The judge allows them to join Haller’s case. The bonding of the mothers will work well for the trial but the father is easily persuaded by monetary offers. What sounded like a good idea in joining the cases may prove to be a thorn in Haller’s side as he and his team work to defeat AI gone rogue in court, the proving ground.

Set against the background of the LA fires of 2025, a personal side of the story comes forth as Haller’s first ex-wife Maggie McFierce moves in with him since her house is in the no-way in zone of the fires. This turn of events ignites a flame between the former partners.

 

After Michael Connelly spent three years covering crime in Los Angeles, he wrote his first novel featuring Harry Bosch, The Black Echo, which he based partly on a true crime. Three of Connelly’s characters have found success on streaming platforms Amazon Prime and Netflix: Bosch, Bosch: Legacy, The Lincoln Lawyer, and Ballard.

 

 

We Were Never Friends by Kaira Rouda

 Sorority sisters Beth and Roxy’s adult children are getting married to each other, and to kick off an engagement party, Roxy has pulled out all the stops for a sorority sister reunion to celebrate Celeste Harrison and Zach Gentry in the latest from Kaira Rouda, We Were Never Friends.

Roxy has invited Beth, the mother of the bride of course, but she has also included Jamie Vale, the double-legacy pledge who is now a cardiologist. A fourth “sister,” Amelia Dell gets word about the festivities, crashing the party with her current boy toy Brett.

Gathering at Roxy’s Palm Springs vacation home, the “sisters” notice how the home refurbished by Roxy’s husband Ryan looks so much like the hotel where the last gathering of the women occurred, the Desert Sands, giving the gathering a déjà vu moment. A fifth member of the sorority sister group, Sunny Spencer, drowned at that celebration 25 years ago.

But as the title declares, these women were never friends, and the cracks in their relationships grow over a couple of days together. Rouda expertly weaves the women’s past entanglements and simmering resentments into the weekend’s escalating drama. Before the party is over, one of the revelers will not be leaving alive.

Kaira Rouda was born in Illinois but lives in Long Beach, California. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, Women’s Fiction Author Association, and the International Thriller Writers. Her book Jill is Not Happy has been named a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by Zibby Media.