A straightforward romantic thriller enlivened by dynamic characters.
Estranged high-school sweethearts find themselves entangled in a serial-killer case in Kay’s mystery series opener.
Pennsylvania park ranger Emily Davis, while searching for a missing hiker, stumbles onto a human skull. Soon, the rest of skeleton is found, and it appears that the killer posed the body by folding its hands. Equally startling to Emily is the police detective assigned to investigate it: her ex-boyfriend, Sgt. Wade Brunner, whom she hasn’t seen in 11 years. When they were teenagers, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and left her when she desperately needed him—just after her little sister, Nora, went missing. While Emily and Wade sift through their unresolved feelings and rekindle their romance, police dogs unearth other murder victims. It seems that the killer has no desire to slow down and ultimately focuses on Emily, who gets a threatening note, followed by an item that means she’s the next target. Kay infuses this murder mystery with a Christian theme: Emily and Wade are both churchgoers, regularly pray, and find solace in Bible verses; Wade is also a youth pastor. The depiction of their complicated past and reunion is remarkably detailed, generating compelling drama that their investigation only enhances. The reliable supporting cast includes Emily’s fellow rangers (one who’s trustworthy, and another who’s sexist); Gavin, Wade’s private-security friend; and the sergeant’s partner, Sgt. Jamie Strauss, who’s soon to be wed. A few choice suspects will keep readers guessing at the culprit’s identity. However, the slow-moving investigation primarily involves Wade struggling to link all the victims and making little progress in doing so. Similarly, the killer’s motive for zeroing in on Emily is oddly inconsistent. Nevertheless, the author’s taut story remains engaging, and further novels in the series will surely pique readers’ interest.
A straightforward romantic thriller enlivened by dynamic characters.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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 top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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