The usual mix of humor, detection, and flamboyant personalities adds sparkle to an otherwise mundane mystery.
A new sheriff makes her mark with some decidedly unorthodox crime-fighting techniques.
Somehow Vivian Borne, antiques dealer, thespian, amateur detective, and all-around diva, has been elected sheriff of Serenity County on the banks of the Mississippi River. Her Prozac-popping daughter, Brandy Borne, and Brandy’s diabetic Shih Tzu, Sushi, have long been her partners in detective work as well as antiquing (Antiques Ravin’, 2019, etc.). When Brandy and Vivian visit James Sutter, owner of the Wentworth Mansion, which is being slowly restored to its former glory, a short tour reveals many valuable antiques, including a Tiffany lava vase. Oddly, though Jimmy owns the house, the Wentworth family still owns the furniture. When Vivian rushes into the house that night to save Jimmy—and the vase—from a fire, she finds that the Tiffany vase is gone. Brandy’s boyfriend, police chief Tony Cassato, suggests that Vivian stay out of his investigation, but soon she’s holding court in the hospital, insisting that she’s ready for the following night, when tryouts begin for the play she’s directing. Releasing herself from the hospital, she goes directly to the coroner just in time to save the already badly burned body that everyone assumes is Jimmy from cremation so that an autopsy can be performed. Her appearance makes her unpopular with both the coroner and Jimmy’s stepson, Gavin Sutter. Vivian’s hunch pays off when the autopsy indicates that the man was murdered by a blunt instrument. Insurance agent Cliff Reed meets with Sutter and Benjamin Wentworth, heir to the collection, who are shocked to learn that the insurance on the house has lapsed and some of the antiques may be missing. Something odd is going on that may be a motive for murder. Vivian, busy illegally rewriting the play as a musical, is flabbergasted when Sushi digs up a body, readily identifiable as that of Jimmy Sutter, not far from the playhouse garage and the trailer of missing janitor Leon Jones. Is the unidentified body that of Jones? And what could be his involvement with the Wentworth mansion?
The usual mix of humor, detection, and flamboyant personalities adds sparkle to an otherwise mundane mystery.Pub Date: April 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1143-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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 suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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