5 Mysteries You'll Want to Finish in One Night
Cold
cases, Danish detectives and Laura Lippman—what else could a reader
want? Besides, that is, the flawed yet lovable detective and the killer you
never saw coming.
2 of 5
The Weight of Blood: A Novel
By Laura McHugh
320 pages;
Spiegel & Grau
In the opening sentences of The Weight of Blood, a photographer in Henbane, a small
Ozark town, enchanted by the ghostly image of vultures perched on the branch of
a frozen, dead tree, finds the body of a teenage girl named Cheri Stoddard
drifting in the shallows of the North Fork River. Lucy Dane, the closest thing
Cheri had to a friend, begins unraveling a mystery that stretches back to her
own mother's disappearance 17 years before. The story, alternately told in
Lucy's voice and her mother Lila's, is gripping, full of sharp (if occasionally
predictable) twists and turns. McHugh's vivid, vital depiction of Henbane is
where the novel really comes alive—it's a place that's lush with
natural beauty, haunting and dangerous, where you can practically taste
"the air woozy with ripeness and rot."
— Ruth Baron
Published 03/24/2014