Zippy and fun, with just enough ambiance to satisfy readers seeking spooks and humor.
A D.C. librarian caught in a political scandal hides out in a small-town Oregon library job that deepens her connection to books in uncanny ways.
After she lodges a whistleblower complaint based on political machinations she overhears on a break from her position at the Library of Congress, Josie Way gets as far out of town as she can. She winds up in Wilfred, Oregon, a place she’s quickly reminded hasn’t even technically been a town since the old mill shut down 25 years ago. Although Josie intends to remain as town librarian only as long as it takes for her complaint to get investigated, she’s shocked when Darla Starling, the librarian who hired her, and assistant librarian Roz Grover tell her that the librarian position is as temporary as she is. Now that social-climbing Ilona Buckwalter has pronounced the library’s site the perfect place for a retreat center, some of the library trustees are hopeful that this new business could be what brings Wilfred back from the brink. But Josie didn’t come all this way to let it all go, and she fights Ilona the best way a librarian can: by a well-researched report demonstrating the library’s value to the town. Take that! And Josie’s just starting to come into her real power, for her long-standing connection to books gets stronger and almost otherworldly. Maybe she should read that copy of Folk Witch that’s always appearing in the background? Good thing she has books, and the library’s resident cat, Rodney, on her side, because she stumbles on a dead body she’s pretty sure was someone sent from D.C. to keep her quiet. Like anyone could stop her from telling the truth.
Zippy and fun, with just enough ambiance to satisfy readers seeking spooks and humor.Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2874-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.
Stephanie Plum’s 31st adventure shows that Trenton’s preeminent fugitive-apprehension agent still has plenty of tricks up her sleeve, and needs every one of them.
The current caseload for Stephanie and Lula—the ex-prostitute file clerk at her cousin Vincent Plum’s bail bonds company, who serves as her unflappable sidekick—begins with two “failures to appear.” Eugene Fleck is suspected of being Robin Hoodie, who robs from the rich and, yes, distributes the proceeds to the poor. Racketeer Bruno Jug, who’s missed his court date on charges of tax evasion, is also suspected of drugging and raping a 14-year-old. But neither of these fugitives can hold a candle to Zoran Djordjevic, aka Fang, a self-proclaimed vampire wanted in connection with the gruesome fate of his late wife and three other missing women. As usual, Stephanie’s personal life is just as helter-skelter as her professional life as a bounty hunter. She’s managed to get herself engaged both to Det. Joe Morelli, of the Trenton PD, and Ranger, a former Special Forces agent who runs a private security firm; she thinks she may be pregnant; and she’s willing to marry the father, whichever of her fiances that turns out to be. On top of it all, her nothingburger schoolmate Herbert Slovinski suddenly pops up at one of the funerals she ferries her Grandma Mazur to, hitting on her relentlessly and gilding his importunities by cleaning and painting her shabby apartment and laying new carpet. Luckily, Lula’s on hand to offer cupcakes that stave off the worst disasters, and whenever this hodgepodge threatens to slow down, another FTA appears, or fails to appear.
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781668003138
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 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
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