My ever-growing tower of crime novels is proof of the reader’s lament: “So many books, so little time.” This spring’s TBR list includes headline grabbers like former FBI Director James Comey’s “FDR Drive,” Elle Cosimano’s funny fifth entry in the Finlay Donovan franchise and Brendan Slocumb’s “The Dark Maestro,” the third in his classical music-centered crime series. But I was most drawn to a quartet of less heralded but equally engaging novels that turned out to have some serendipitous connections.
The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne
By Ron Currie
Putnam: 368 pages, $29
March 25
A master of witty, thoughtful fiction who does not retreat from tackling big concepts, Ron Currie explores new physical and emotional territory in “The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne.” The novel’s action centers on Barbara Levesque, the once-and-future matriarch of Waterville, Maine’s, Franco American community. In 1968, 14-year-old Babs is stewing with the history of Little Canada, including a variety of soul-crushing injustices perpetrated against it by the larger Protestant community. A brutal attack by a Franco American cop trying to whitewash his heritage and its aftermath teaches Babs a hard-learned lesson that colors her adult life: “In all the years to come, with all the enemies you were to know,” Currie’s narrator observes, “you would never again assume one was beaten until they were dead.”
After going on the lam with the help of the local parish priest, Babs returns some five years later to find her exploits have made her a hero in Little Canada and the community’s putative matriarch and protector. Married and widowed some 50 years later, Babs’ realm includes settling disputes between community residents and the local police and, more significantly, running an opioid ring in the region with her girlfriends, all gray-haired pillars of the Little Canada community.
But by 2016, Babs’ world is imploding. First, Sis, her youngest daughter and a drug addict, goes missing. Then, her shady business ventures draw the attention of a Canadian mob, which sends an ice-cold fixer, known only as the Man, to find out who’s running the operation and either take it over, remove the competition or both. Can Babs’ eldest daughter, Lori, a wounded Afghanistan war veteran with addictions of her own, find Sis before it’s too late? Can Babs, now in her 60s, keep the encroaching mob from destroying the community she loves? While the novel’s title and early chapters foreshadow certain answers, readers will still find themselves tearing through pages and rooting for this little-known community and the families that lead it.
This is the first time I’ve read about Maine’s Franco American community. Why was it appealing for you and how does it relate to your own family’s history?
It is my family’s history, and you’re certainly not alone in having never heard anything about the Franco American experience. I think most Americans have a vague sense that there’s something French-ish going on in Louisiana, but they’ve got no idea why or how. Before those people were “Cajuns” they were Acadians, burned out of their homes in Canada and northern Maine after the British took over just before the Revolutionary War.
What inspired such a complicated antihero as Babs Dionne?
My grandmother and her friends, old Canuck widows with sharp tongues and a taste for drink, were the inspiration for Babs and her crew. To understand why Babs had to be a criminal is to understand, first, that being Franco in Maine was literally a crime. There was a law on the books in Maine until the 1960s that forbade speaking French in public schools. When my grandmother was a girl, the Klan held rallies in the woods outside Waterville. All of which is to say that in the world of the novel there is no way to remain thoroughly Franco and thrive financially without being a criminal.
Will you write more novels set in Little Canada?
I already have! The second installment in the Dionne family saga, which is a kind of origin story in which we see how Babs came to run Little Canada’s underworld, is done. So, with any luck, the wait won’t be long.
The Trouble Up North
By Travis Mulhauser
Grand Central: 288 pages; $29
March 11
Early in “The Trouble Up North,” Travis Mulhauser’s second novel, the Sawbrook family lineage in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is traced back to a 19th century fur trapper who, with his Native American wife, amassed a vast tract of land along the Crow River as a hedge against rival woodsmen. Over the next two centuries, the family’s land holdings are augmented by bootlegging, cigarette trafficking and other felonies. By the early 2000s, that legacy is in the hands of Rhoda Sawbrook, who’s desperately trying to preserve the family’s way of life against encroaching developers and vacationers who have overrun the land and raised property taxes to unsustainable levels: “Take that away from me,” Rhoda says of the Sawbrook land, “and I can’t tell you who I am. I wouldn’t even know my name.”
But, like Babs Dionne’s, Rhoda’s family is hanging by a thread. Husband Edward is dying of cancer; her only son, Buckner, is a feckless alcoholic; and her youngest daughter, Jewell, is a bartender who hustles vacationers in home garage poker games while dreaming of a big win in Vegas. But eldest daughter Lucy, a park ranger, has committed for Rhoda the worst transgression of all by putting her share of Sawbrook property into a conservation trust. When the vacationer who hosts Jewell’s poker games entices her to torch his boat for $10,000 so he can collect the insurance money, the stage is set for a tragedy that forces Jewell and her siblings deep into the Sawbrook woodlands to hide out from police.
Mulhauser’s beautiful descriptions of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and astute take on social and economic forces roiling the community is a dynamic backdrop for a story of a family coming to terms with its checkered past and uncertain future. Together, they make “The Trouble Up North” a compelling, satisfying read that, like Currie’s Babs Dionne saga, uses crime novel conventions to tell a bigger, more universal story.
What moved you to create the fictional Cutler County, Mich.?
Cutler County is based on Emmet County, Mich., and my hometown of Petoskey, which is situated on Lake Michigan and is startlingly beautiful. It’s a tourist economy and the tensions between the locals, the different vacationing classes and the land itself is something that I’ve never gotten tired of exploring.
Any role models for your fierce matriarch, Rhoda Sawbrook?
Rhoda’s character was inspired by my mom. Her maternal parents immigrated to the U.S. and settled in Detroit after suffering brutal experiences in World War II: Siberian prison camps, bombing raids, combat and a home invasion by Russian troops. Their tenacity — and the way their stories and values were passed down through the years to breathe life (and death) into the generations that follow — are the biggest influences in my writing about the Sawbrooks.
What big ideas are you grappling with in the novel?
One of the big topics for me is generational family struggles and class conflicts involving land. I wanted to reveal the lengths that families are willing to go for each other, and how those bonds can both harness us to dysfunction and be our ultimate strength. I also wanted to explore how a place’s natural beauty can become the greatest threat to its survival. As a Michigander, I am reluctant to approach such heady subjects, but what I think books about crime can do — say from a Charles Portis, best known for “True Grit” — is give writers the space to explore “bigger” ideas through characters that are accessible to them and to the reader. That’s what I truly love about crime writing.
Kaua’i Storm
By Tori Eldridge
Thomas & Mercer: 445 pages, $17
May 20
After writing four novels in the Lily Wong series, which features a modern-day Chinese Norwegian ninja, Tori Eldridge plumbs other aspects of her heritage to create a new series about a park ranger in “Kaua’i Storm.” Makalani Pahukula is a multiethnic Native Hawaiian who left her home on Kaua’i 10 years ago for a job as a park ranger in Oregon. Home now to celebrate her grandmother’s 80th birthday and reconnect with her family, Makalani learns two of her cousins are missing. When a body is found in the Keālia Forest Reserve, Makalani strikes out on her own to investigate, traveling deep into the forest and beyond.
Eldridge writes so beautifully about the land, or āina, you can almost smell the flora and fauna, while her evocative description of a hula performed during the birthday party is transporting: “She extended her field-tanned arms to the ‘ukulele player’s vamp, undulating one hand at a time like a graceful wing while the other hand poised on her hip.”
Anchored by a strong, capable park ranger reminiscent of Nevada Barr’s iconic Anna Pigeon, this thought-provoking, engaging debut immerses readers in Native Hawaiian culture, language, complex genealogy and social issues while delivering a solid mystery with more than a few surprises.
After Lily Wong, what motivated you to write such a different protagonist? What did you personally bring to her character and family background?
Having paid homage to the Chinese and Norwegian sides of my heritage, I wanted to dive into my Hawaiian roots with a relatable protagonist and a multiethnic, multigenerational family. Since I’ve moved to Portland, where many Hawaiian diaspora live, and I wanted to give Makalani Pahukula serious wilderness skills, making her an Oregon national park ranger felt ideal. So did the universal theme of coming home.
Your writing about the Hawaiian landscape reminded me of Nevada Barr’s descriptions in her national parks-set mystery series. Are there writers who set their books in national parks or other Hawaiian writers you admire?
Thank you for saying so! Caring for the land (mālama ‘āina) is intrinsic to the Hawaiian way of life. I’m inspired by authors with the talent to evoke visceral emotions with their descriptions beyond explaining what can be seen. But the ‘āina in Hawai‘i is also layered with deeper meaning and cultural history that Hawaiian authors like Kiana Davenport and Jasmin Iolani Hakes understand.
What went into your decision to take such a deep dive into Native Hawaiian culture?
As a Native Hawaiian, the only way I could write a novel set in Hawai‘i was to dive deeply into our culture, history and ongoing issues like poverty, struggles leasing land designated for us by the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920 and the 50% blood quantum the U.S. government still uses to determine eligibility, i.e., whether Native Hawaiians are Hawaiian enough.
I wove Native Hawaiian words into my text as naturally as they weave into daily Hawaiian life. My editor appreciated the authenticity right from the start, including the nuanced Hawaiian Pidgin English some of my characters speak, and the value-added glossary I provided at the end.
What’s next for Makalani?
Her next adventure will take her to the Big Island of Hawai‘i, where she’s enticed into another mystery and the paniolo (Hawaiian cowboy) way of life.
Cold Burn
By A.J. Landau
Minotaur Books: 336 pages, $28
April 29
In “Cold Burn,” collaborators Jon Land and Jeff Ayers (writing as A.J. Landau) reunite Michael Walker — a park ranger turned special agent for the National Park Service — and FBI special investigator Gina Delgado (after “Leave No Trace”) for a complex, high-stakes investigation. What starts as seemingly unrelated deaths in Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park and Elfin Cove and Florida’s Everglades National Park grows into a conspiracy that threatens life on the planet. Early on readers learn that central to the action is Axel Cole, a naturalized American citizen whose goal is to become “the world’s first trillionaire, his collective list of companies growing more influential and powerful than all but the world’s greatest powers, his worth greater than the GDP of France’s and Italy’s combined.” Cole’s ruthless methods are a challenge to the ingenuity and tenacity of Walker and Delgado, but the breakneck pace that builds in the novel’s later pages results in a showdown that’s believable but also feels like the sweetest revenge on a villain we know all too well.
Landau has a winning recipe with this series, marrying action with extensive research into everything from avalanches to submarines, plus a generous sprinkling of details on our national parks that will hopefully spur readers to visit America’s living national treasures. And while one can admire the sensitive exploration of the Tlingit, an Alaskan Native community that figures prominently in the plot, sometimes the research in “Cold Burn” slows the action, as does the constant toggling between the two characters’ investigations in the novel’s initial chapters. But once they come together, Walker and Delgado are a sure-fire dynamic duo readers will want to revisit.
How do you balance that vast knowledge base in the novel with the demands of a fast-paced thriller?
Jon Land: Jeff had this amazing concept for a thriller series centered around his incredible knowledge of the national parks, using the parks as a backdrop that would define the series. However, his initial draft of what became “Leave No Trace” wasn’t working, and he needed help to make the idea come to life. I suggested we blow up the Statue of Liberty on page one. He reminded me that the Statue of Liberty wasn’t in the book. “It is now,” I told him.
I’m curious how you settled on ISB special agent Michael Walker and what were the advantages in pairing him with special agent Gina Delgado of the FBI.
Jeff Ayers: I told Jon about the Investigative Services Branch of the National Park Service, which would allow our hero to work out of any of the over 430 sites they oversee. Jon especially embraced the fact that the ISB had never been utilized in a thriller before, making this a fresh take in the genre. Gina grew out of wanting to pair Michael with an FBI agent who was also an expert in explosives. Their skill sets match perfectly.
Share a bit about your research into Alaska Native cultures and why the Tlingit people became a compelling element in the novel.
Ayers: Alaska’s beauty is unprecedented, and spending time in Glacier Bay National Park and the surrounding communities gives you a taste of the Tlingit and their culture. When visiting a museum in Sitka, the guide called all of the Alaskan Native artifacts “materials from curiosity collectors.” I knew that Jon would agree that Michael would need to investigate stolen artifacts and get past the locals’ animosity toward National Park staff. Talking to rangers and locals also helped with the flavor of the area.
Any takeaway messages for readers in your character Axel Cole?
Land: We looked at Axel Cole as emblematic of the excess driving contemporary tech, which is the modern-day version of the military-industrial complex. Cole is a projection of a selfish, conceited worldview that barrels ahead without any concern over the wreckage left in its wake. So, at heart, he’s a prototypical Sean Connery-era James Bond villain. The difference is that he isn’t out to dominate the world so much as to own it.
