A gorgeous murder mystery that explores what it means to be human—the pain and the love.
A recently divorced woman confronts her loss, even as she helps to solve two murders—and survives a belligerent storm.
Ellery Wainwright arrives at Big Sur’s Resort at Broken Point to celebrate her 20th anniversary—alone. Following her recent divorce, she’s been adrift, torturing herself with memories, trying to stay strong for her kids, and this “vacation” seems like a mistake until she meets Ravi and Nina, two other guests, who take her under their wings. The resort, known for its eclectic art collection in addition to the beautiful views and luxury accommodations, is also hosting a wedding. It’s a shock when the groom leaves the bride at the altar. Of course, it’s even more of a shock when Ellery discovers the groom’s body floating in the pool the next morning. Was he dead before the wedding? If so, who sent the breakup text message? When another guest dies shortly after, victim of a suspicious fall, Ellery, Ravi, and Nina continue their amateur sleuthing—but their biggest problem might be the weather. A storm of the century bears down on Big Sur, washing out bridges and roads, stranding the guests in this extremely clever version of a locked-room mystery. While the structure might not be completely original, there’s a lot about this book to set it apart, including the wild danger of the setting. Most notable are the characters who, while perhaps representing some familiar types, truly do jump off the page as three-dimensional, engaging people, Ellery most of all. Her heartbreak is real, and relatable, as is her past trauma of witnessing another death and her fierce love for her children. Like any successful literary detective, she is “the one on the outside, watching,” and Condie gives her the empathy, and grace, to understand that “you get to keep that. The way you let yourself love someone and really feel it, and the loss.” In this way, the novel is more about healing than it is about death.
A gorgeous murder mystery that explores what it means to be human—the pain and the love.Pub Date: June 4, 2024
ISBN: 9781538757604
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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