An immensely likable sleuth headlines this lively crime tale.
In this third installment of a mystery series, an amateur Northern California detective searches for a missing person and stumbles on cyberespionage.
Trisha Carson leads a relatively quiet life working part time at the San Francisco Giants ballpark. But she’s solved two murders just in the last few years. So when Tyler Stockton, the adult grandson of her live-in landlord, Earl, seemingly vanishes, Trisha’s curiosity kicks into high gear. With a bit of snooping, she’s on to something much bigger than a missing person’s case. What that is specifically, she’s not exactly sure, but it involves a business heavily invested in cyberspying. There’s also a possible link to Earl, who flies and designs drones, which could put him, Trisha, and her dad, Robert, who lives with them as well, in peril. As Trisha digs for information on these cyberspies, she suspects a hacker has somehow bugged her house, made mysterious charges to her credit card, and nosed around on her computer and phone. As if this weren’t enough, Trisha seems to have a new admirer, Burk Dennison, a man who’s fine as “eye candy” but whose frequent run-ins with her eventually become contrived and stalker-ish. Carroll packs this installment with dynamic plot turns. While the enigmatic villains and their initially unclear objective complicate the story, everything makes sense by the end. Trisha’s intriguing personal life fuses well with her amateur investigation. For example, she only recently reconnected with Robert, who abandoned her and her younger sister, Lena, decades ago; this sparks brief but endearing scenes of Trisha and her father on the case together. Though her deductive skills, at least in this novel, rely too much on luck, Trisha proves far smarter and more prudent than the “danger junkie” she believes she is. The author’s pithy writing deftly blends technological jargon with relatable humor, such as the two sisters blaming each other for waking up Timmy, Lena’s 6-month-old son.
An immensely likable sleuth headlines this lively crime tale.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Indies United Publishing House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2021
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
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.
The feds must protect an accused criminal and an orphaned girl.
Maybe you’ve met him before as protagonist of The 6:20 Man (2022): Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine, who’d had the dubious fortune to tangle with “the girl on the train,” is now assigned by his homeland security boss to protect Danny Glass, who's awaiting trial on multiple RICO charges in Washington state. Devine has what it takes: He “was a closer, snooper, fixer, investigator,” and, when necessary, a killer. These skills are on full display as the deaths of three key witnesses grind justice to a temporary halt. Glass has a 12-year-old niece, Betsy Odom, and each is the other’s only living relative—her parents recently died of an apparent drug overdose. The FBI has temporary guardianship of Betsy, who's a handful. She tells Travis that though she’s not yet 13, she's 28 in “life-shit years.” The financially well-heeled Glass wants to be her legal guardian with an eye to eventual adoption, but what are his real motives? And what happens to her if he's convicted? Meanwhile, Betsy insists that her parents never touched drugs, and she begs Travis to find out how they really died. This becomes part of a mission that oozes danger. The small town of Ricketts has a woman mayor who’s full of charm on the surface, but deeply corrupt and deadly when crossed. She may be linked to a subversive group called "12/24/65," as in 1865, when the Ku Klux Klan beast was born. Blood flows, bombs explode, and people perish, both good guys and not-so-good guys. Readers might ponder why in fiction as well as in life, it sometimes seems necessary for many to die so one may live. And what about the girl on the train? She's not necessary to the plot, but she's a fun addition as she pops in and out of the pages, occasionally leaving notes for Travis. Maybe she still wants him dead.
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781538757901
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
