Jealousy, crafty zoo critters, and unintended consequences wrapped in an often humorous mystery full of quirky characters.
A DNA test has disquieting and dangerous consequences.
With the popularity of DNA testing, many a family has found itself with members they never knew existed. So it’s a shock but not a total surprise for California zookeeper Theodora "Teddy" Bentley-Rejas (The Otter of Death, 2018, etc.), already the stepmother of two, to discover that her husband, Joe, has another son. Her mother-in-law, mystery writer Colleen Rejas, has been hiding Dylan Ellis, Teddy’s newfound stepson, in her cottage while waiting to disclose the relationship that was revealed when they both took a DNA test. After Teddy’s snobbish mother shipped her off to boarding school, Joe, her high school squeeze, had a drunken one-night stand with Lauren, whose parents kicked her out when she wanted to keep her baby. Joe married someone else, had two children, was widowed, and then married Teddy. Unfortunately, Dylan’s suddenly become a suspect in the murder of Cliff Flaherty, a writer for local TV puppet show Tippy-Toe & Tinker, who was found floating in the harbor next to Teddy’s boat. Even though he’s the sheriff, Joe has to recuse himself from the case because Dylan’s his son. But that doesn’t stop Teddy and Colleen from investigating. Since Poonya, the zoo’s red panda, one of her charges, has recently been written into the TV program’s script, Teddy’s gotten to know all the puppeteers, most of whom had good reason to hate Flaherty. When Dylan is arrested, Teddy redoubles her efforts. Her access to Colleen’s search engine, PlatoSchmato, allows her to dig up dirt on the crew and cast but not in time to prevent a second murder that leaves her in danger.
Jealousy, crafty zoo critters, and unintended consequences wrapped in an often humorous mystery full of quirky characters.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4926-9914-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 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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