Brandreth’s seventh Wilde mystery feels like two books in one: a crisp account of the Ripper murders and a droll roman à...
After a string of sleuthing successes, has the Dynamic Victorian Duo met its match in the most formidable criminal of the era? Silly question.
Narrating in an appropriately plummy first person, Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle relates his latest adventure with peerless wit Wilde (Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Gaol, 2012, etc.), which begins when drunken Wilde, making no secret of the fact that his financial situation is dire, visits the author on the first day of 1894 to offer holiday wishes and entice him into another investigative romp. The pair hook up with Chief Constable Macnaghten of the Metropolitan Police, who’s tracking a malefactor whose modus operandi unnervingly recalls that of the infamous Jack the Ripper. The discovery of a new victim five years after the initial spate of killings has raised fears of a return, and the fact that the murder occurred not in Whitechapel but in the more affluent Chelsea neighborhood raises additional questions. Wilde and Doyle’s leisurely probe begins with a close study of the five verified Ripper murders from the previous decade. The duo’s interrogation of suspects and witnesses does not preclude entertaining detours like a trip to the circus with Oscar’s wife and two sons. They rub elbows with Bram Stoker and Lewis Carroll. While they don’t publicly expose the identity of the serial killer, they bear witness to another of his crimes, and Wilde makes a compelling case for his identity.
Brandreth’s seventh Wilde mystery feels like two books in one: a crisp account of the Ripper murders and a droll roman à clef about the last years of the singular Wilde. As with the author’s earlier Wilde mysteries, the journey far overshadows the destination, and delightfully so.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64313-021-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
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
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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