Overall, a bit more history than mystery. Choose this if you revel in atmosphere.
When a violent murder scene yields no obvious evidence, private detective Charles Lenox must solve one of his most complex cases yet.
In this third prequel to the series (The Vanishing Man, 2019, etc.), Lenox is deep in a chess match with Lord Deere, neighbor and husband to close friend Lady Jane, when Inspector Hemstock from Scotland Yard knocks on his door with news of a murder. Lenox arrives at Paddington Station soon after and meets Joseph Stanley, the stationmaster on duty, as well as the conductor of the train where the body was found. When searching the victim’s pockets reveals no form of identification, Lenox discovers that the only real clue is the lack of evidence: The murderer has gone so far as to remove the label from the victim’s suit jacket. Commissioner Sir Richard Mayne gives Lenox permission to assist with the case—an unpopular decision with most of the force. Eager to prove his value, Lenox and his butler, Graham, go in search of passengers on the train from Manchester to London and scan the papers for word of a missing person. While the Yard suspects gang involvement linked to Manchester, Lenox’s investigation places this murder on a global scale when the first person connected to the victim turns out to be American. Politics across the pond are at a boiling point, with the Abolitionist movement gaining strength and whispers of civil war growing louder by the day. The commentary around this is sobering, as it seems so far-fetched to Lenox that civil war could be a possibility, and yet….As the private detective continues to contemplate motive, he’s often distracted by Lady Jane’s attempts to find him a suitable match and end his reign as most-eligible bachelor. This subplot almost takes the spotlight away from the mystery while it provides satisfying backstory for key relationships in the series. Avid mystery readers will enjoy Lenox’s thorough review of his sleuthing process, not in the sense of “this is how I solved this” but rather “this is how I could have done better.”
Overall, a bit more history than mystery. Choose this if you revel in atmosphere.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-31220-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 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
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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