I believe I must have picked up Murder in the Marais at a library book sale and I’ve had it for a while so I finally decided to read it. Aimee Leduc is a detective who is hired to decode and deliver a file to an old woman in the Marais, the old Jewish Quarter of the city.  At her delivery she discovers the intended recipient has been murdered with indications that it was the work of an anti-Semite group or group member.

The crime is linked to crimes in the war and war criminals who have invented new personas and new lives for themselves, which they don’t want threatened by Aimee’s investigation.  The stories that are intertwined are horrifying and sad and filled with regret.  I am not a big fan of WWII themed novels usually, but this was very well written, a good mystery, with fully fleshed out characters.   A very good first novel from Cara Black.

The Guise of Another is by Allen Eskens.  The book is set in both Minnesota and New York.  The mystery involves a dead man, who may not be dead or is not actually the correct dead man..so he is anyway and how did he come to “be” the first dead man?  Identity theft, missing persons, accidents of fate, political and police corruption, hit men and government graft all come into play in this book with Alexander Rupert at the center.  He is a Minnesota policeman, currently under investigation for his part in police corruption in his old task force, now consigned to the Frauds unit while awaiting the results of the hearings.  He uncovers a case in which the victim is not who he is supposed to be and that sets in motion a series of events and deaths, as he tries to uncover the true identity of the mystery man and what he was hiding from before he died.  An okay mystery.

Local Girl Missing is about secrets and the truth and how it can all come back to bite you in the end.  Frankie is a successful hotelier, who has left the small dreary seaside town she grew up in far behind until she gets a call that the body of her missing childhood friend has finally been found.  Daniel, Sophia’s brother, asks that she come back and help him figure out what happened when Sophia disappeared.  As soon as she arrives in town, there is a sense of unease and distrust.  Frankie finds herself pursuing clues and revisiting her past including secrets that she thought were well buried.  A psychological thriller type with some gaslighting elements similar to some of the other “girl” books that have been published in the last couple of years.

Slow Cooked Murder by Tim Myers is me sticking my toes back in cozy mystery land.  I haven’t really been reading many cozies for a while, but I’ve had this one sitting on my kindle and decided to take a break from all the thrillers and police procedurals.  I’ve always liked Tim Myers cozies, in particular I enjoyed his donut series.  His characters are great, not so quirky as to be unrealistic, he creates some lovely small town settings, and the mysteries are fun and interesting.  This was a fun cozy read, I still prefer his other series, but I did enjoy reading about this adult education cooking teacher who gets thrown into a murder investigation after the death of one of her students.