The Ungodly Hour – Laury A. Egan (Interlude Press)

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Pandemic or no, spring approaches. The days are getting balmier, at least here in Colorado, and the afternoons are getting longer. After the reading rush of judging the Ferro-Grumley awards this year, I was looking forward to a bit of a lazy spring/summer read, and Laury A. Egan’s latest mystery, The Ungodly Hour, did the trick nicely.

Dana Fox is a New Yorker temporarily ensconced in Mykonos, teaching a photography workshop to tourists. She’s been doing it for a number of summers, but this year is different. Mykonos has been invaded by church-going anti-gay protesters, and a serial killer targeting gay men is on the loose. Dana accidentally snaps a photo of the murderer, who ransacks her darkroom. Despite Dana’s new relationship with a hot policewoman named Cybele, both she and her students are in danger. Maybe even from themselves.

Egan evokes Mykonos well, and the setting pervades the story, giving it an airy, sun-kissed aspect you don’t usually find in mystery thrillers. This serves the plot well but also echoes the assignments she gives her photography students about light and dark and finding the subject within the shadows.

The romance with Cybele develops quickly, perhaps too quickly, with the definite promise of a new beginning for both of them at the end of the book, but whether or not their relationship can weather life on another continent remains to be seen. It would be an interesting premise for a sequel. I would also like to have seen more of the cross-carrying Christian militia, maybe even from the first. The killer is appropriately dark and Egan provides a nice red herring or two to muck things up.

So, this breezy little thriller requires a longish afternoon, some cheese and olives with a bit of ouzo (or grappa, if you prefer), and a light breeze blowing through your backyard. Reads like this are what summer’s all about.

JW

© 2020 Jerry L. Wheeler

Satellite Street – Eleanor Lerman (The Permanent Press)

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Sometimes, the mail brings me grief. Sometimes, the mail brings me joy. And every so often, it brings me something that piques my curiosity–which is better than either of those. The elements in Satellite Street are pretty disparate–a son whose father is in the beginning stages of dementia, a trans girl who can speak to the dead, a deceased disc jockey, and the “professional skeptic” who outed the DJ long ago and ultimately caused his demise. Eleanor Lerman, however, has wound them into a wonderful, heartfelt narrative I kept thinking about long after I’d finished.

Paul Marden, a sixty something year old New Yorker, is slowly recovering from a sudden illness and is hiding out where he grew up, in a coastal town previously ravaged by Hurricane Sandy. The house he rents is in a space-themed subdivision on Satellite Street close to the nursing home his father is in. Lelee, a transgender girl who says she can communicate with the dead, also lives in the same project. An accident with Paul’s dad in the nursing home involves Paul in a beyond-the-grave feud between The Great Oswaldo, the skeptic, and Happy Howie, the dead gay DJ, facilitated by Lelee. Paul isn’t sure he’s up to dealing with his father, let alone solve the supernatural problem, but he and Lelee have no choice.

Lerman does a terrific job setting her scene. The atmosphere of the hurricane ravaged coastal New York town to which Paul retreats suffuses the book, and perhaps that aura of ruination is what attracts Paul. He’s finally found somewhere as broken down as he is. But you can’t rebuild without demolishing, and it’s that air of possibility that allows Lerman to bring all those jigsaw pieces together to form the bigger picture.

I know I’m supposed to be paying more attention to the relationship Paul has with Lelee, and it’s certainly worth its weight to the plot, but I connected emotionally with Paul and his ailing father, Louis. The love they have for each other is as evident as their frustration with each other. Their exchanges are honest and real, containing some of the best writing in the book.

My only problem–and it’s a minor one–is that the mechanics of the climax, the supernatural confrontation between Oswaldo and Happy Howie, seem forced. I’m not talking about the confrontation itself, but the manner in which it happens. To say more would be spoiling it, but I can almost guarantee you’ll understand what I mean when you get there. I can also guarantee that by the time you finish the book, you will have forgotten all about that gaffe.

Lerman has written a fascinating book, full of beautiful moments and unexpected turns that will have you recommending this to your friends.

JW

© 2020 Jerry L. Wheeler