Curtains for American theatre thespian

A brash, arrogant rising theatre star from the U.S. is murdered with a straight razor on a riverbank outside Glasgow, then a second member of the Sweeney Todd troupe tumbles down steep stairs, and a third — well, it’s a busy time for detective chief superintendent William Lorimer and his familiar decent-folk crew.

Detective inspector Molly Newton is a key sleuth on the murders while pondering her future with Daniel Kohi, the Zimbabwean refugee ace copper who’s been picked as the diversity face of Police Scotland; his mother disapproves of Molly’s refusal to believe in a deity, and the whole independent woman thing.

Alex Gray’s Act of Malice (Sphere, 400 pages, $38) is a terrific police procedural from a scandalously underappreciated murder mystery author.

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Nancy, mentally ill, gets committed to a psychiatric hospital after her controlling lover Felix and a chummy consortium of London neighbours reminiscent of the Rosemary’s Baby crowd testify she’s an imminent danger to herself and others — while Nancy insists the young woman who hung herself in a basement flat was murdered.

An over-the-top misogynist cop buys the suicide, but detective inspector Maud O’Connor eventually sleuths clues to look again, though all the world seems against her in Nicci French’s The Last Days of Kira Mullan (William Morrow, 464 pages, $25), published in March.

The mystery is compelling, yet there’s a pervading nastiness to it all. Some readers may be troubled by the depiction of mental health care professionals as barbaric monsters: the doctors are manipulated dupes, female nurses sadists, male nurses rapists.

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Roman Carruthers, superstar financial advisor to Atlanta’s Black musicians and athletes — and master of insider trading, stock market manipulation and money laundering — returns home to Virginia where his waste-of-oxygen brother has a drug debt to sociopathic gangsters.

Roman’s family owns the local crematorium, which is handy as he tries to protect them from absolute monsters, crooked cops and crookeder politicians, family lies and secrets, while the tortured, maimed bodies pile up.

S.A. Cosby’s King of Ashes (Pine & Cedar Books, 352 pages, $26) spins well as a Yojimbo-template tale if you’re into ultra-violence and amoral heroes — just hope if you go into a crematorium, that you’re already dead.

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A popular Dorset publican in debt to a gangster is found dead, tied to a chair, deer antlers on his head, in the middle of a country road — puzzling to detective sergeant Nicola Bridge, who left Liverpool for a quiet life after discovering her husband was a cad.

A little village can hide secrets galore and be choc-a-bloc with red herrings, ancient grudges, and scandalous bed-hopping aplenty. Nicola’s young sidekick, constable Harry, he’s trying to prove he’s not a bumpkin.

Broadchurch creator Chris Chibnall’s Death at the White Hart (Pamela Dorman Books, 352 pages, $40) is a nifty police procedural with a detective duo we hope to see again.

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Two people garrotted in their cars in 1935 Winnipeg, then mutilated, creating much rather-leisurely sleuthing for war-blind brilliant detective chief inspector Sidney, faithful sidekick Sergeant Maxime, and “attractive, charming” Winnipeg Free Press reporter Winnifred.

Retired U of W historian Robert J. Young establishes his Winnipeg history creds by cramming hundreds of names, streets, buildings, and events into a whodunit that never spends much time in one place.

Published in late 2024, Murder in a Minor Key (At Bay Press, 142 pages, $25) is so short, albeit with teachable moments about unpleasant history, that it’s barely an outline for a book.

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Retired Free Press reporter Nick Martin notes Alex Gray considers newspaper reporters scum. While neither confirming or denying, Martin insists he never had an expense account to bribe kids for information about parents and teachers.