What the Fly Saw

January 5, 2015
The murder of funeral director Kevin Novak, found dead with an arrow in his chest and a skeleton clutched in his arms, propels Bailey’s appealing second near-future mystery featuring Albany, N.Y., detective Hannah McCabe (after 2013’s The Red Queen Dies). Kevin’s family reports that he was coping badly with the sudden death of his best friend, and he was seen acting skittish toward a self-proclaimed psychic, Luanne Woodward, whom he had recently met. In addition, Kevin’s son is showing disturbing signs of irrationality, the minister of Kevin’s church is evasive, and someone serves an arsenic-laden pie that fells Luanne after a séance. Hannah and her detective partner, Mike Baxter, retrace Kevin’s steps, uncovering evidence that the seemingly steady husband and father was enmeshed in a crisis with significant repercussions for Kevin’s circle. Other deaths, ostensibly from drugs, pose complications for Hannah that promise to carry into the next book, to which readers are sure to look forward. Agent: Josh Getzler, Hannigan Salky Getzler Agency.

January 1, 2015
A pseudo-futuristic world features two detectives investigating the death of a man no one had reason to kill.Bailey begins the second in this series (The Red Queen Dies, 2013) with a note explaining that, although the setting of the book is 2020, the reader should think of the story as taking place in an alternate world where most things are the same but some are not, adding that this book should be considered "a work of crime fiction, not science fiction." Any reader who is not put off by this peculiar assertion and premise will continue on to a fictionalized version of Albany, New York, in which Detective Hannah McCabe and partner Mike Baxter are charged with investigating the death of harmless funeral director Kevin Novak, who was shot with a bow and arrow inside his own funeral home. There's nothing very suspicious about what's happened except for the lack of suspects who might want to do Kevin harm. Medium Olive Cooper offers her help with the case by hosting a seance to which she invites the detectives and Kevin's family. When this turns out to be more dramatic than Hannah had bargained for, she tries to follow up to find out if there were secrets in Kevin's life that are responsible for his murder. Her attentions are distracted, however, when there's a shocking death related to the perp from her last case, making Hannah wonder if the two might be related. The distracting alternate future seems like the kind of thing that might have been dreamed up by someone writing about 2020 in 1970, not 2015. The plot is confusingly unrelated to the setting and is standard procedural fare, though a hook at the end portends better developments in the future.

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November 1, 2016

In her second near-future procedural after The Red Queen Dies, Albany, NY, detective Hannah McCabe and her partner Baxter investigate the strange murder of funeral director Kevin Novak, found in the basement of the funeral home with an arrow from his own hunting bow in his chest. Bailey also pens the Southern crime historian Lizzie Stuart series (Forty Acres and a Soggy Grave) and has written about black writers in the genre in African American Mystery Writers: A Historical and Thematic Study (2008).

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2015
The second in Bailey's mystery series set in an alternate-future Albany, New York, picks up right where The Red Queen Dies (2013) left off. Police officer Hannah McCabe is assigned to investigate the murder of mortician Kevin Novak, who was shot with a bow and arrow in his own funeral parlor. Novak was receiving counseling from both his priest and the church psychiatrist. McCabe and her partner, Mike Baxter, are quick to interview the two megachurch leaders, who mention that a psychic had recently made quite an impression on Kevin. What did this upstanding family man know, see, or do that made him the target for murder? The main difference between present-day Albany and the city in 2020 is that social media are further evolved and even more all-consuming: people are in near-constant contact with their ORBs (Our Reach Beyond communication systems), and online communities provide countless hours of stimulation to their anonymous members. But there is still room for murder. A solid crime tale and a fascinating look at a parallel universe.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)