Although softer-edged and less terrifying than most of McPherson’s stand-alones (Come to Harm, 2015, etc.), the slow...
A desperate woman flees London for refuge in a quiet Scottish village.
Jude Hamner has fond memories of Lowland Glen Books from a holiday she took with her husband just before he left her. Distraught after the deaths of her parents in a freak accident, she books a ticket for Scotland and arrives with only the clothes she was wearing at the funeral. Middle-aged bookseller Lowland “Lowell” Glen comforts Jude when she returns to his shop in tears. He kindly offers her refuge at his home and a job cataloging the books stuffed higgledy-piggledy all over the store. Like the owner, the house is dusty and in need of a strong hand. Slowly Jude settles into her job until a young and very pregnant Eddy Preston turns up claiming that Lowell is her father, the product of a long-ago summer when the younger, wilder Lowell hosted an ever changing group of hippies. Jude is skeptical of her claim and wonders if she’s even pregnant, so when Eddy asks for the use of the rooms Jude had cleaned and refurnished, Lowell offers Jude the use of a cottage he owns next to the church graveyard. Jude’s interest in the cottage's former owner is piqued by the often cryptic comments he wrote in the books he read before he died. Against all odds, Jude and Eddy develop a friendship, and, although she still doubts the pregnancy, Jude begins to form an alliance with the girl. A threatening note sends Jude running back to the safety of Lowell’s house, and that’s where she’s temporarily staying when someone sets fire to her cottage. In Lowell’s home, Jude encounters layer upon layer of deception connecting Lowell’s physician father, the deaths of a number of elderly patients, a mysterious collection of photographs, and the enigma of Eddy’s birth. At the same time, she must also deal with a crisis in her life as she comes to terms with her own guilt and reveals the true reason for her flight.
Although softer-edged and less terrifying than most of McPherson’s stand-alones (Come to Harm, 2015, etc.), the slow unraveling of several deeply puzzling circumstances and the complex characters provide a fine read.Pub Date: April 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7387-4762-0
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Midnight Ink/Llewellyn
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
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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