Paper Phoenix is a non-series title by Mickey Friedman/Michaela Thomson. It's a (repeat) freebie right now on Kindle US.
link:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DD0B6HK/
Spoiler:
Quote:
“My new interest is burglary.When some women get divorced they go back to school, I thought. Some do volunteer work at the hospital, or ... have affairs with inappropriate men."
(That's early in the book. Later on, she works the man in too.)
"Wickedly delicious... What makes (Thompson's) book so particularly wonderful is the way it accomplishes the detective novel's covert mission of urban analysis and social criticism." -San Francisco Examiner
"(Thompson) knows how to create that sense of place which is so important to any novel, but particularly to crime fiction; her characters are believable men and women in a real world..." --P.D. James
First comes divorce, then comes murder…
…or at least sweet thoughts of murder. Maggie Longstreet has plenty of them after slimy, ambitious Richard trades her in for a more recent model. She’s so depressed she can barely get out of bed when Larry Hawkins, a seemingly not-at-all depressed acquaintance, commits suicide out of the blue. Suddenly Maggie goes on high alert, remembering something her evil ex said about Larry—something highly suspicious.
And from there, it's just a short segué to a bracing new development:
“When some women get divorced they go back to school, I thought. Some do volunteer work at the hospital, or join communes and learn to birth calves. Some have affairs with inappropriate men. My new interest is burglary. Maggie Longstreet, former wife and mother, past president of the Museum Guild, now starting a career as a second-story woman.”
Fortunately, Maggie isn’t alone in her adventure—a very attractive, much younger man proves a lot more fun than Richard ever was. In fact, the real delight of this witty, sly mystery is seeing Maggie come alive again after a suffocating marriage. Set in the’70s, it has a bit of that Mad Men feel of women on the brink of something big. And completely unexpected.
You know Maggie’s going to be okay when she says: “I’d rather have had one of those cute little guns with a mother-of-pearl handle, but this (diamond pin) would have to do. I concealed it in my hand. At least now I was armed—or pinned.”
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And
Fault Tree is another non-series titles by the same author. It's a (repeat) US Kindle Countdown deal at $0.99 for almost three more days.
link:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GVE8C2C
Spoiler:
Quote:
HELLO, IT’S YOUR PAST CALLING…
“Placing blame” thinks Marina Robinson, “is my life’s work. And why?” There’s a lot in her past to account for—nightmares and terrors, crimes and betrayals that happened half a world away, ten years go. Now she’s an engineer with a great job. She’s a failure analyst, an investigator who figures out what causes accidents, and she’s working on her most fascinating case--the fatal crash of a roller coaster--when suddenly the phone rings. And her world tilts…
The elusive, unidentified caller can be only one person—Catherine, her beloved younger sister who supposedly died in a fire ten years ago. Once again—for the moment abandoning her case--Marina is inexorably drawn back to India, the country that seduced her so long ago in so many ways, where something unspeakable happened to a child, and where she herself participated in misdeeds so shocking she can’t forgive herself. She starts by tracking Catherine’s lost lover, Nagarajan, the irresistibly charismatic guru under whose spell Catherine fell those many years ago, a man so dangerous, so full of hubris he took his name from Indian snake gods, and who at times seemed more serpent than human. But who is also reportedly dead—a suicide in a jail cell.
Thus begins an odyssey of fear and danger--far from dead, Nagarajan seems to be everywhere, and so do his disciples (at least those who haven't gone mad from guilt). Nowhere, it seems, is Marina safe, nor is anyone who knows anything about the young victim of Nagarajan’s atrocities. Wherever she turns, the path seems strewn with fresh bodies. Just when the jig seems up, Marina calls on her skills as a failure analyst and Thompson pulls off a surprise ending that will leave you gasping.
Fault Tree is that rare novel that pulls us into the exotic experience of a stranger in a strange land, much like Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's Heat and Dust or Gregory David Roberts' Shantaram.
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