Friday, February 21, 2020

Six novels where the crimefighters also happen to be parents

Heather Chavez is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley’s English literature program and has worked as a newspaper reporter, editor and contributor to mystery and television blogs. Currently, she’s employed in public affairs for a major health care organization where she writes human interest stories. She lives with her family in Santa Rosa, California.

No Bad Deed is Chavez's first book.

At CrimeReads she tagged six crime novels in which the protagonist's own family life introduces another wrinkle to the case. One title on the list:
Hush Hush, Laura Lippman

In the twelfth book in the series, Baltimore private investigator Tess Monaghan now drives a minivan named Gladys. Tess is in total mom mode here: coaxing three-year-old Carla Scout to eat organic fish tacos and enduring Tasmanian Devil-level meltdowns. (Carla Scout steals every scene she’s in.) So when Tess is hired by the wealthy Melisandre Harris Dawes, notorious for having killed her own child, Tess is understandably uneasy. Melisandre is making a documentary about her case, and wants to reconnect with her now teenage daughters. In Hush, Hush, parental guilt is on full display—both Tess’s and Melisandre’s—as is the transformative nature of motherhood, for good and ill.
Read about another entry on the list.

Hush Hush is among Lisa Levy's ten top novels in mother-daughter noir.

The Page 69 Test: Hush Hush.

--Marshal Zeringue