Fans will be delighted with Midnight Louie’s 25th adventure, which continues to expand the ongoing tale of murder, treachery...
Las Vegas’ shortest, toughest, furriest PI is on the prowl again.
It’s no easy task to watch over public relations specialist Temple Barr, but her roommate, noir cat Midnight Louie, takes his guard duties seriously. Though Temple is engaged to former priest and popular radio show host Matt Devine, her heart flutters at the news that her former lover, magician and undercover agent Max Kinsella, is back in town and reluctantly working with Lt. Carmen Molina of the Las Vegas Police Department, who, in the past, had accused him of murder. Matt’s been blackmailed into nightly meetings with Kathleen O’Connor, aka Kitty the Cutter, whose horrific early life in Ireland helped turn her into a IRA operative and stone-cold killer. Kitty was the first lover of a very young and innocent Max while he and his cousin Sean were visiting Ireland. When Sean was killed, Max became Kitty’s obsession. Meanwhile, Temple is offered a job by an old-time showman whose current project has something to do with UFOs. The alien invaders of his imagination have nothing on the earthbound invaders who’ve made his partially finished building and parking lot a dumping ground for dead bodies. Louie and his gang of feisty felines, who’ve saved Temple and her friends many times in the past (Cat in a White Tie and Tails, 2012, etc.), have their work cut out for them, since Temple, Max and Matt are all involved in dangerous projects and moving in contrary directions as they try to solve the latest murders and dig up the truth about the past.
Fans will be delighted with Midnight Louie’s 25th adventure, which continues to expand the ongoing tale of murder, treachery and angst. Newcomers may want to start with the first volume to enjoy the total experience.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2748-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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