Colorful genre trappings enliven this familiar take on a resolute amateur female detective.
A New York City bar owner embarks on a deadly quest to identify a serial killer in this mystery.
Life is going well for Jude Dillane on New Year’s Eve. Her Corner Lounge bar and restaurant at 10th Street and Avenue B has turned into a New York hot spot, and she has a terrific man in her life. When her business partner, top chef Pete, reports a special knife missing from his kitchen, it’s worrisome. But the last thing Jude expects is to have the knife turn up in the chest of a man related to one of her regular customers. Worse, she learns from the FBI agent assigned to the case that the murder is disturbingly similar to killings that began on New Year’s Eve in the area 19 years ago. Apparently, what had been a five-year lull between deaths is now over, and a threatening note tells Jude—the novel’s first-person narrator—that she is in the serial killer’s sights. What’s Jude to do but start investigating on her own—especially if her suspicions are discounted by law enforcement officials and those closest to her? The familiar trope of the amateur female sleuth determined to track a killer—regardless of the risks to herself and others and the possible personal consequences if she ignores warnings from loved ones and the authorities—isn’t every reader’s cup of tea. And Jude does seem rather cavalier about distressing her loving boyfriend and chef, Pete. (“But still, what harm could it do to do a little digging just to satisfy my curiosity and maybe save my life?”) Nevertheless, readers should enjoy the behind-the-scenes bar setting, mouthwatering references to Pete’s culinary efforts, and offbeat characters. The players include Jude’s ex-Marine pal/landlord, a slimy reporter who works for a “slagheap of pseudo news and innuendo,” and a cadre of male customers called the bar’s “10th Street Irregulars,” who may or may not be who they seem. This is the second installment of Stoler’s Murder on the Rocks mystery series, and with frequent allusions to what happened in the first volume, Bar None (2020), readers may want to start there.
Colorful genre trappings enliven this familiar take on a resolute amateur female detective.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-94-791594-7
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Level Best Books
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2021
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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