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RAVEN RAIN

From the The Delarosa Series series , Vol. 3

Sharp prose and vivid characterizations elevate this detective story.

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An East Coast private eye’s blackmail case spirals into murder in this third installment of a mystery series.

Johnny Delarosa’s newest client is former pro football player Stan Shelton, now a successful car dealer. Shelton needs the Port City private investigator’s help when a blackmailer threatens to expose the married dealer’s link to an escort service. Johnny and his research assistant, Katie Pitts, trying to track down the blackmailer, inadvertently witness someone dumping a body. With the corpse left outside a building Shelton owns, Johnny struggles to keep the ex-athlete’s name out of the press. The PI eventually teams up with Monica Mattson, a police detective working a sex trafficking case that’s focused on the very same escort service Shelton had been using. Behind this shady company are malicious types determined to cut off any loose ends, which soon results in a second homicide. Complicating Johnny’s inquiry is the possibility that Shelton isn’t telling him everything he knows. The PI suspects his client is more deeply involved in illegal activities than he’s admitted. Johnny races to find answers before he, Monica, or even Katie becomes the next murder victim. While following Johnny’s investigation is entertaining, Stever’s vibrant characters turn out to be the story’s greatest components. For example, Katie is learning the gumshoe ropes from former cop Johnny, whose case takes an unexpected turn when he recognizes a potential criminal as someone from his past. Similarly, the women in this novel are smart and capable, particularly Katie and Monica. The author’s concise descriptions make for a breezy narrative and a quick read. While metaphors are sometimes blatant, they’re also delightfully tongue-in-cheek, such as Johnny’s assuring his client that, though Shelton “made a bad play…it is now first and ten again. A new set of downs.”

Sharp prose and vivid characterizations elevate this detective story. (acknowledgements)

Pub Date: July 22, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-9983371-4-2

Page Count: 295

Publisher: Cinder Path Press

Review Posted Online: Sept. 22, 2020

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

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

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NONE OF THIS IS TRUE

It's hard to read but hard to look away from.

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When two women who share a birthday meet, a journalist becomes the subject of her own true-crime mystery.

On their 45th birthdays, Josie Fair and Alix Summer meet at a pub and discover they were born not only on the same day, but in the same hospital. Alix is a successful journalist, and Josie convinces Alix that her story is worth telling: Josie met her husband when she was 13 and he was 40. “I can see that maybe I was being used, that maybe I was even being groomed?” she confesses to Alix. “But that feeling of being powerful, right at the start, when I was still in control. I miss that sometimes. I really do. And what I’d like, more than anything, is to get it back.” From this premise Alix creates a Netflix series, Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin! which investigates Josie’s life as she reconciles what happened to her as a teen and seeks a new path. With the story unfinished, the narrative unfolds in the present tense, with prose that jingles like song lyrics: “He turns to see if the girl is behind him, and sees her wishy-washy, wavy-wavy, in double vision through the glass windows of the hotel.” Alix is both intrigued and repulsed by Josie, but she initially gives her the benefit of the doubt. After all, Alix’s husband, Nathan, has a drinking problem, and Alix knows what it’s like to be reluctant to leave a bad situation. But Josie seems more interested in being part of Alix’s seemingly glamorous life than she is in fixing her own, and when three people end up dead and Alix’s life is turned upside down, the evidence points to Josie—and turns the TV series into a murder mystery. Transcripts from Alix’s interviews alternate with the narrative, offering increasingly varied perspectives on Josie’s story as told by her neighbors, friends, and family members. With so many versions of events, the ending shatters, leaving readers to decide whose is the truth.

It's hard to read but hard to look away from.

Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023

ISBN: 9781982179007

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023

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