An English country house mystery infused with humor, verve, and plenty of surprises.
In this novel, a private secretary and a police detective investigate a murder at a British estate.
The Earl of Unsworth is atop the highest turret of his English castle, taking a brief respite from the large, extravagant 18th-birthday party he’s throwing for his favorite niece and ward, Fanny, when his butler interrupts him. The man informs Unsworth that an unknown young woman’s body has just been found in the garden. Hoping to avoid a scandal, Unsworth asks his highly efficient and capable private secretary, Mr. Quayle, to conduct his own discreet inquiries alongside the official police investigation. Despite misgivings, Quayle agrees. To his surprise, an old army buddy, now DI Wintle, turns out to be in charge of solving the crime. Despite their friendship, Wintle is not happy to have a civilian tagging along—or, in fact, trying to stay one step ahead. It soon becomes clear to both men that the Unsworth family is holding back its secrets and that not everything and everyone are what they seem. Their attempts to track down the identity of the murdered woman and how she came to be in the castle garden on the night of the party take both Quayle and Wintle far afield, including to London, as they try to sift through the conflicting stories offered by the members of the Unsworth family. The two sleuths interview Fanny—a surprisingly steely social butterfly—her domineering aunt Lady Constance, and her hapless, ne’er-do-well cousin Arthur, who has an unfortunate penchant for running away at crucial moments. Set in the 1920s, this second installment of Slayton’s series certainly checks all the boxes of the English country house mystery genre—a wealthy aristocrat’s estate, a long-lost relative, a missing family heirloom, a loyal household staff, and an enigmatic riddle. But the story never feels merely formulaic thanks to vivid writing, lively characters, and quietly snarky humor that will keep readers engaged from Page 1. This entertaining mystery hits all the right genre buttons in a fresh way.
An English country house mystery infused with humor, verve, and plenty of surprises.Pub Date: April 3, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 309
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
So, Paradise isn’t paradise, and the Parker legacy lives on.
Parker’s Jesse Stone series continues with more trouble in Paradise, Massachusetts.
Police Chief Jesse Stone does a welfare check at the urging of a local citizen named Matthew Peebles and discovers a dead body in a room piled high with trash and old Polaroids depicting murder victims, either garroted or shot in the head. Who werethese victims? Chief Stone improbably keeps the investigation local—no need to complicate the story with the state police or the FBI—and that helps maintain the small-town flavor of this entertaining tale. Stone hires a new cop, Derek Tate, for his understaffed department. But to put it mildly, Tate is a poor fit. Boss and newcomer have radically different concepts of policing: Stone sees himself as a servant of his community, while Tate only wants to catch criminals and crack heads. At one point, Stone asks him what he did on his shift: “Did you give a tourist directions? Did you help an old lady cross the street or get a little girl’s cat out of a tree? Anything at all like that?” Tate replies “That’s not what real cops do,” and proceeds to alienate “beloved institutional figure” Daisy, cafe owner and longtime provider of donuts and muffins to Paradise’s finest. Indeed, Tate could be a model fascist, and Stone’s biggest mistake is not firing him. Meanwhile, Peebles fears for his life because of his “aging mobster” great uncle, who just might have something to do with all those murders. If Peebles says anything to the cops, he knows he’s a dead man. Hell, he’s probably doomed anyway. Stone is a stand-up cop who puts his life on the line for the town he loves, and his dealings with friends and colleagues are fun to witness: “I’m the chief. I’m supposed to tell you what to do,” he tells Molly Crane, his deputy chief. “It’s adorable that you think that,” she replies. And when all Paradise cops are banned from Daisy’s cafe because of Tate’s stupidity, Stone navigates treacherous territory while showing respect. This is Farnsworth’s first entry in the series created by Robert Parker, and fans will be pleased.
So, Paradise isn’t paradise, and the Parker legacy lives on.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593544761
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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