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A DEADLY AFFAIR

UNEXPECTED LOVE STORIES FROM THE QUEEN OF MYSTERY

A decidedly mixed bag, not unlike love itself.

Fifteen reprinted stories, most of them originally published between 1923 and 1933, for those who think the doyenne of golden-age detective fiction had no time for love.

Fans of Christie’s novel-length puzzlers won’t be surprised to learn that love doesn’t conquer all. In “Death by Drowning,” Miss Jane Marple announces Rose Emmott, unmarried and pregnant, has been murdered, and she knows by whom. A pair of lovers confess separately to killing the woman’s husband in the Harley Quin mystery “The Love Detectives.” Hercule Poirot intervenes in a lovers’ triangle only just in time to prevent murder in “Wasps’ Nest,” as does Quin’s friend Mr. Satterthwaite in “The Face of Helen.” Soon after asking the vacationing Mr. Parker Pyne to determine whether she’s being poisoned in “Death on the Nile,” the importunate Lady Grayle is dead. Tommy and Tuppence do their best to compete with the Father Brown franchise in “The Man in the Mist.” It would be a stretch to call most of these love stories, and amateur sleuths would have to look even more closely to find the romance in “Fruitful Sunday,” in which a jeweled necklace appears in a just-purchased bowl of fruit, or “The Case of the Caretaker,” in which Miss Marple’s physician gives her a mysterious story to read and solve. But love plays a more central role in the lesser tales “The Case of the Rich Woman” (a client of Mr. Parker Pyne’s who is seeking happiness finds it through an unexpected romance) and “Magnolia Blossom” (a straying wife is torn between loyalty to her husband and the creditor she loves), and in the best of the bunch, “The King of Clubs,” Poirot deftly uncovers the truth about a lothario who deserved exactly what happened to him. The collection is capped by Christie’s reminiscences of two abortive romances of her own.

A decidedly mixed bag, not unlike love itself.

Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-06-314234-3

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021

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TO DIE FOR

Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.

The feds must protect an accused criminal and an orphaned girl.

Maybe you’ve met him before as protagonist of The 6:20 Man (2022): Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine, who’d had the dubious fortune to tangle with “the girl on the train,” is now assigned by his homeland security boss to protect Danny Glass, who's awaiting trial on multiple RICO charges in Washington state. Devine has what it takes: He “was a closer, snooper, fixer, investigator,” and, when necessary, a killer. These skills are on full display as the deaths of three key witnesses grind justice to a temporary halt. Glass has a 12-year-old niece, Betsy Odom, and each is the other’s only living relative—her parents recently died of an apparent drug overdose. The FBI has temporary guardianship of Betsy, who's a handful. She tells Travis that though she’s not yet 13, she's 28 in “life-shit years.” The financially well-heeled Glass wants to be her legal guardian with an eye to eventual adoption, but what are his real motives? And what happens to her if he's convicted? Meanwhile, Betsy insists that her parents never touched drugs, and she begs Travis to find out how they really died. This becomes part of a mission that oozes danger. The small town of Ricketts has a woman mayor who’s full of charm on the surface, but deeply corrupt and deadly when crossed. She may be linked to a subversive group called "12/24/65," as in 1865, when the Ku Klux Klan beast was born. Blood flows, bombs explode, and people perish, both good guys and not-so-good guys. Readers might ponder why in fiction as well as in life, it sometimes seems necessary for many to die so one may live. And what about the girl on the train? She's not necessary to the plot, but she's a fun addition as she pops in and out of the pages, occasionally leaving notes for Travis. Maybe she still wants him dead. 

Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024

ISBN: 9781538757901

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024

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THE GREY WOLF

One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.

A routine break-in at the home of Sûreté homicide chief Armand Gamache leads slowly but surely to the revelation of a potentially calamitous threat to all Québec.

At first it seems as if nothing at all triggered the burglar alarm at Gamache’s home in Three Pines; it was literally a false alarm. It’s not till he receives a package containing his summer jacket that Gamache realizes someone really did get into his house, choosing to steal exactly this one item and return it with a cryptic note referring to “some malady…water” and “Angelica stems.” Having already refused to meet with Jeanne Caron, chief of staff to Marcus Lauzon, a powerful politician who’s already taken vengeance on Gamache and his family for not expunging his child’s criminal record, Gamache now agrees to meet with Charles Langlois, a marine biologist with ties to Caron who confesses to a leading role in stealing Gamache’s jacket. Their meeting ends inconclusively for Gamache, who’s convinced that Langlois is hiding something weighty, and all too conclusively for Langlois, who’s killed by a hit-and-run driver as he leaves. The news that Langlois had been investigating a water supply near the abbey of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups sends Gamache scurrying off to the abbey, where the plot steadily thickens until he’s led to ask how “an old recipe for Chartreuse” can possibly be connected to “a terrorist plot to poison Québec’s drinking water.” That’s a great question, and answering it will take the second half of this story, which spins ever more intricate connections among leading players that become deeply unsettling.

One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.

Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024

ISBN: 9781250328137

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Minotaur

Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024

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