Finch impressively raises the stakes of this tale between tea settings, and his character development is top-notch.
In the 10th installment of this Victorian-era series, a Member of Parliament–turned–private detective gets the chance to solve a 30-year-old mystery that involves his boyhood friend.
Charles Lenox hasn’t seen his Harrow school friend Gerald Leigh in many years, ever since Leigh got happily expelled and set off for a life of travel and, eventually, scientific inquiry. But hearing from Leigh generates an extra sense of excitement when his letter reveals that his return to London is related to his “mysterious benefactor.” Lenox and Leigh started an unusual friendship at school when Leigh explained that his tuition was paid by an anonymous “friend,” whose identity he desperately wanted to figure out. It was Lenox’s first mystery, and it still hasn’t been solved. It becomes clear that this is much more than child’s play when Leigh goes missing from the Collingwood Hotel and Lenox must track him down—and once he does, Leigh reports that attempts have been made on his life. The descriptions of the attackers are at once familiar to Lenox, who recognizes the pair as Anderson and Singh, part of the notorious Farthing gang. Who could possibly order this traveling scientist dead? This is when Leigh reveals that the mysterious benefactor has recently left him a rather large sum, enough to make him rich by any standards—and enough to make people risk killing for it. While in London, Leigh is also persuaded to speak at the Royal Society, which has been encouraging his visit for a long time. To Lenox’s surprise, his old friend has become quite the sensation. But when Leigh’s solicitor Ernest Middleton is found murdered, Lenox is reminded that the target is still very much on Leigh’s back. It’s time he consults his agency partners Lord John Dallington and Polly Buchanon, who have been working a break-in case at Parliament, keeping watch there overnight and, to Lenox’s extreme interest, becoming closer with each passing day. The tension continues to rise as an element of deceit clouds the entire investigation and events take surprisingly sinister and twisting turns.
Finch impressively raises the stakes of this tale between tea settings, and his character development is top-notch.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-07042-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 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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