A satisfying treat for horse and murder mystery lovers.
A sports journalist and amateur detective tries to track down the killer of a teenager in this mystery series opener.
Two and a half years ago, 16-year-old Stacy Jean Milhouse stole a horse and trailer from the stable where she worked and ran away from home. At least that was how it looked. The trailer was found abandoned but the girl and the horse were never seen again—until a wildlife rescue team found human bones while saving a goose in a local marsh. Stacy never made it a mile from the stable and her death was no accident. Journalist Jess Kennard covered horse racing at the highest level until one exposé unexpectedly led to bloodshed. Keeping a low profile at her family’s horse rehabilitation farm in Kentucky, Jess abandons all hope of peace and quiet when she learns about Stacy’s murder. Having practically raised Stacy after the death of her mother, Jess feels devastated (“She was like my little sister…Or maybe my daughter. A bit of both”). The protagonist puts her investigative skills and knowledge of the horse world to use as an unofficial consultant to the local police. Jess and Det. Joe Schuler, a college friend, have a limited amount of time to look for clues before the killer becomes aware of their search. When the pair begins to close in on newly elected U.S. Rep. Paul Renfrew and his family, the stakes grow higher—and deadlier. This an immersive, adventurous novel that dresses up mystery tropes by placing them in the cutthroat world of elite horse racing. DePrima’s intimate, detailed depiction of Kentucky horse country elevates the story even if the final reveal of the killer is a bit of a letdown. The motivations behind the murder seem too impulsive to justify the buildup. Still, Jess is the perfect protagonist for a mystery series: plucky, stubborn, and independent, with a hidden vulnerable side. Her long history with Joe makes the chemistry between them easy and exciting. But the setting is the standout here; the author deftly takes readers to a place that feels lived-in and dangerous.
A satisfying treat for horse and murder mystery lovers.Pub Date: May 15, 2023
ISBN: 979-8987508800
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Bowker
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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