The killer may be elusive, but the plot is tangled in far too many red herrings.
Holidays are never happy occasions for a pair of sleuthing sisters.
Bernie and Libby Simmons are so used to murders arriving on holidays (A Catered Tea Party, 2016, etc.) that they’re hardly surprised when one turns up for Halloween—which is, after all, made for murder. The sisters are catering a costume party for Darius Witherspoon, who’s been under a lot of stress since the disappearance of his wife, Penelope, from their Manhattan apartment. Bernie and Libby have recently bought a condo at the remodeled Berkshire Arms, not too far up the Hudson River from the city, and Darius had also bought a condo there before his wife disappeared, hoping to move in soon. He decides to throw his party despite Penelope's disappearance: "Halloween was her favorite holiday," he tells Bernie and Libby. The sisters' best efforts to set up a tasty feast come to a crashing end, though, when Darius flies out his apartment window with a rope around his neck. The sheriff, who already has it in for the amateur sleuths, writes it off as suicide, but once Bernie opens the envelope that Darius insisted she keep in her safe, they’re sure it was murder. The envelope contains $5,000 and a plea for the sisters to investigate his death. Darius’ enemies include his partner in a gallery the dead man neglected, preferring to go on treasure hunting expeditions that never panned out. Nor is he beloved of the owner of the Berkshire Arms and his son, both of whom lost money in one of his schemes. Bernie and Libby manage to get themselves locked on the roof of the Berkshire Arms. Escaping, they find the body of Penelope Witherspoon, the missing wife, hanging in a tree. As the sisters stumble from one investigation to the next, they are ever hopeful even though they never seem to get the right answers to their questions.
The killer may be elusive, but the plot is tangled in far too many red herrings.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61773-337-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
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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