Reviews: 'The Den,' by Abi Maxwell, and 'The Killer in Me,' by Olivia Kiernan

By Abi Maxwell. (Alfred A. Knopf, 280 pages, $25.95.)

Small New England towns can provide their residents with a sense of belonging to a community. A life made hard by farming rocky soil, short growing seasons and long winter nights creates a dependency on good relations with neighbors to offer companionship and aid. But the price of such a community often comes at the high price of enforced conformity, which is what two pairs of sisters, separated by 150 years, will discover.

Jane and Henrietta live in the present, while Elspeth and Claire are from the past. Both pairs of sisters will be ripped apart when Elspeth disappears, a fate that will be shared by Henrietta in the future. Author Abi Maxwell provides readers with plots that center on women's behaviors, specifically, how the desire for love will bring young women into conflict with their communities. Hester Prynne would have felt right at home in a town where women's yearnings are interpreted as sins in need of punishment.

LORRAINE BERRY

In a cold, wet suburb of Dublin, chief detective Frankie Sheehan is feeling good. Her team has nailed their past few cases, and it's been a while since a major crime. For a change of pace, she decides to do a favor for her sister-in-law Tanya, an advocate for a nonprofit that seeks justice for the wrongly convicted. She's meeting with Tanya's latest project to offer a cop's perspective on evidence that the freed inmate hopes will get his conviction erased.

But the cool, handsome man who makes his way across the bar where she and Tanya are waiting isn't just any bloke. It's Sean Hennessy, who — 17 years earlier and while still a teen — was convicted of killing his parents. Now he's done his time, all the while professing his innocence, and he wants to prove the whole thing was a mistake.

The detective is intrigued, although she has little doubt as to his guilt, and accepts the challenge. She's barely done with her drink before their meeting is interrupted and she's summoned to a murder scene. In coming days she finds herself working on fresh killings that have macabre echoes of the Hennessy case all over them.

Trouble is, at the time of the new killings, Hennessy was in that bar with her.

So begins a cat-and-mouse game, as the detective is led first down one path, then another, and the killer baits her with pieces of the puzzle from 17 years ago and Hennessy's own safety appears at risk. As the old and new cases get more intertwined, Frankie has to ask herself: Just what murders am I trying to solve?

A fresh new voice out of Ireland, Olivia Kiernan delivers her second crime novel with a veteran's flourish.

GINNY GREENE