Not a great mystery, but great fun as long as you avoid that Zesty-Paste.
A questionable client determined to prevent her uncle’s poisoning provokes another ebullient dash down Memory Lane with Los Angeles private eyes Bertha Cool and Donald Lam.
The case, first published in 1947 under the pseudonym A.A. Fair, begins as Beatrice Ballwin tells the partners she’s convinced that her uncle, hard-driving real estate developer Gerald Ballwin, is at serious risk for being poisoned, presumably by his socialite second wife, Daphne. She forks over a generous retainer Donald sniffs at after she leaves because he doesn’t think she’s really Beatrice Ballwin at all. Inspired by his customary inventiveness, he calls on Daphne himself and promises her lavish exposure to a wave of publicity among the younger set (hint, hint) if she’ll only endorse Zesty-Paste anchovy paste, of which he provides her a hearty supply. Donald figures that Daphne’s appetite for exposure will put any plans for murder she has on hold. This perfect strategy backfires when both Gerald and Daphne are fed arsenic in their servings of Zesty-Paste. Sgt. Frank Sellers, of LAPD Homicide, thinks the most likely suspects are Carl Keetley, the brother of Gerald’s late first wife, a gambler and sometime real estate salesman; the false Beatrice Ballwin, who’s actually Daphne’s secretary, Carlotta Hanford; and Donald himself. Undismayed, Donald ropes Gerald’s dentist, Dr. George L. Quay, and his nurse, Ruth Otis, into the suspect pool and, just when things look darkest, assures Sellers, “Work with me two hours and we’ll have this case solved.” Well, sort of, since, in Gardner’s inimitably brash manner, justice is not so much served as given the finger.
Not a great mystery, but great fun as long as you avoid that Zesty-Paste.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781803360126
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Hard Case Crime
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Middling for this stellar series, which makes it another must-read, preferably in one sitting.
Unbeknownst to each other, Wyoming Fish and Game Warden Joe Pickett and outlaw falconer Nate Romanowski embark on equally urgent pursuits that converge in a way neither of them suspects.
Nate, who’s been off the grid ever since his wife, Liv, was killed in a fire intended to kill him too in Three-Inch Teeth (2024), has sworn vengeance on murderous conspirator Axel Soledad. After shooting several of Soledad’s hirelings, he joins forces with his friend and fellow Special Forces vet Geronimo Jones, who’s tracked him down, to chase his quarry deep into the woods. Governor Spencer Rulon, meanwhile, has pressed Joe into service once again to find veteran hunting guide Spike Rankin and his new assistant, Mark Eisele, who just happens to be Rulon’s son-in-law. Although nobody’s heard from the men for two days, the governor doesn’t want his wife and daughter to know they’re missing, and that means not alerting the media or the local sheriff, who’s no fan of Rulon’s anyway. Readers who’ve already seen Rankin and Eisele overpowered and imprisoned by a mysterious crew they ran into while they were setting up for the elk hunting season will assume that Soledad is behind their kidnapping as well. But Box will keep everyone guessing about exactly how Soledad and the ragtag military cult he’s gathered around him plan to confront the military-industrial complex he’s persuaded them is a clear and present danger. You know you’re in for a wild ride when Joe, saying goodbye to Marybeth, his long-suffering wife, promises her, “I’ll do my job and not cross the line.”
Middling for this stellar series, which makes it another must-read, preferably in one sitting.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593851050
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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