Weaver, a librarian, has a deft touch with the 1930s upper-class repartee. The climactic surprise makes this the best of her...
The scents of murder and betrayal fill the Paris air.
Milo and Amory Ames are vacationing in Lake Como when Milo receives a note from his childhood nanny, Madame Nanette, asking them to stop and see her in Paris. Bidding adieu to their neighbor André Duveau, they leave for Paris, where Madame Nanette had been hired to care for the young daughter of Helios Belanger and his much younger second wife, Beryl. Belanger is a famous French parfumier whose oldest son, Anton, helps run the business and whose oldest daughter, Cecile, is a creative genius who works with her father on the perfumes. Michel, Belanger's younger son, is a playboy with no interest in the family business. Helios’ recent death has been written off as a heart attack, but Madame Nanette, who was once his lover, suspects that he was murdered. Agreeing to look into the matter, the sleuthing duo (A Most Novel Revenge, 2016, etc.) gains entree to the family by asking Cecile to tailor an individual scent for Amory after they meet at a party thrown to reveal the fabulous new perfume Helios had recently created. The motives for murder are many. Helios may have had a mistress, Beryl may have had a lover, and Cecile and Anton both think they should control the company. Milo and Amory have gone through their own share of rough patches in their marriage. Although Amory loves Milo passionately, his secretive ways and playboy reputation still make it hard for Amory to trust him. Realizing that he’s still hiding things from her makes her furious and determined to pursue the case on her own, a course that’s gotten her in trouble in the past.
Weaver, a librarian, has a deft touch with the 1930s upper-class repartee. The climactic surprise makes this the best of her mysteries to date.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-06046-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
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
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous...
A struggling student’s English assignment turns into a mission to solve a 30-year-old murder.
Joe Talbert has had very few breaks in his 21 years. The son of a single and very alcoholic mother, he’s worked hard to save enough money to leave his home in Austin, Minnesota, for the University of Minnesota. Although he has to leave his autistic younger brother, Jeremy Naylor, to the dubious care of their mother, Joe is determined to beat the odds and get his degree. For an assignment in his English class, he decides to interview Carl Iverson, a man convicted of raping and killing a 14-year-old girl. Carl, who maintains his innocence, is dying of cancer and has been released to a nursing home to end his life in lonely but unrepentant pain. The more Joe learns about Carl—a Vietnam vet with two Purple Hearts and a Silver Cross—the more the young man questions the conviction. Joe’s plan to write a short biography and earn an easy A turns into something more. Even after his mother is arrested for drunk driving and guilt-trips Joe into ransacking his college fund to bail her out, he soldiers on with the project, though her irresponsibility forces him to take Jeremy into his care. But it’s his younger brother who cracks the code of the long-dead murder victim’s secret diary and an attractive neighbor, Lila Nash, who has her own agenda for helping Joe solve the mystery, whatever the risk.
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous than championing a bitter old man convicted of a horrific crime.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61614-998-7
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Seventh Street Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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