In Armstrong's A Stranger in Town, Det. Casey Duncan learns that off-the-grid Rockton may be cashiered (50,000-copy first printing). Award-winning YA fiction author Cosimano's first adult novel, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It, features a struggling suspense writer mistaken as a serial killer (100,000-copy first printing). In Finch's An Extravagant Death, Victorian-era sleuth Sir Charles Lennox takes his first trip to America (100,000-copy first printing). In Harper's The Survivors, Kieran Elliot returns to his coastal hometown and relives a childhood tragedy (125,000-copy first printing). Harrod-Eagles's Cruel as the Grave has Bill Slider doubting that a fitness trainer was killed by his girlfriend. Ide's Smoke marks the return of Isaiah Quintabe, the Sherlock Holmes of South Central Los Angeles. Mosley's Blood Grove puts popular protagonist Easy Rawlins front and center again (40,000-copy first printing). In Robb's Faithless in Death, Lt. Eve Dallas wonders if an angry lover really did kill sculptor Ariel Byrd (750,000-copy first printing). Todd's A Fatal Lie, Inspector Ian Rutledge seeks the identity of a stranger who tumbled from a Welsh aqueduct. Westerson's Spiteful Bones has Crispin Guest, London's famed Tracker, untangle the mystery around a bound skeleton found in a manor wall.

Chief Superintendent Markham of Scotland Yard is not happy with Inspector Ian Rutledge, so he sends him to northern Wales to get him as far away from London as possible. A man's body was found in the River Dee, in early spring 1921. When Rutledge arrives, he realizes the man was pushed from the top of the aqueduct. However, no one admits to recognizing the victim. Rutledge traces him to a small community where he finds the man's widow, Ruth Milford, running a pub. Sam Milford was supposedly traveling to work with vendors, but Rutledge discovers that the couple's three-year-old daughter, Tildy, went missing a year earlier, and he suspects that Sam was looking for her. Rutledge uncovers a much more intricate case than he expected, with women and lawyers who lie and keep secrets. As he travels across Wales looking for answers, he encounters danger, violence, and cover-ups that lead to more murders. VERDICT Following A Divided Loyalty, the latest in the series is a complicated investigation that bogs down halfway through as Rutledge chases too many lies and missing people. Despite the slow pace, fans of the series will want Todd's latest historical mystery.—Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN

Bestseller Todd's so-so 23rd novel featuring Scotland Yard's Insp. Ian Rutledge (after 2020's A Divided Loyalty) takes Rutledge, in the spring of 1921, to Wales after a boy's fishing outing at a canal snags a man's corpse. The body is unidentified, but a tattoo suggests the dead man belonged to one of the Bantam Battalions, units of undersized soldiers who served in WWI. When a label in the cadaver's shirt yields the name of the woman who special-ordered it, Ruth Milford, Rutledge travels to Shropshire to seek her out. Ruth initially lies about her identity, but the information she reluctantly provides leads Rutledge to believe it was her husband, Samuel, who died. The Milfords' baby daughter, Tildy, disappeared a year earlier, snatched from her carriage when Ruth briefly left her alone, and is believed dead, and Rutledge pursues the theory that Samuel's murder is somehow connected with that earlier tragedy. The psychic scars of Rutledge's WWI trauma are underplayed, and the whodunit plot generates little suspense. Hopefully, Todd (a mother-son writing team) will return to form next time. Agent: Lisa Gallagher, DeFiore and Co. (Feb.)