A would-be mystery boasting a smaller-than-life Sinatra.
In 1962, Congressman Charlie Marder is sent to Hollywood to spy on Frank Sinatra and find out what special favor mobster Sam Giancana, a buddy of the singer's, wants from him.
Charlie, a moderate New York Republican, is forced into taking on the assignment. Under the authority of Attorney General Robert Kennedy (who makes a brief appearance), the feds have imprisoned Charlie's ailing father, power broker Winston Marder, on charges of consorting with criminals. They won't release him until Charlie gets the goods on Giancana. The congressman has fun out West posing as a consultant to The Manchurian Candidate, less fun when he and his sleuthing wife, Margaret, find a dead body in the trunk of their rented car. What's this secret worth killing for? Successful mysteries have been built on weaker premises, but Tapper does little in the way of plot construction. Stuffed with gossipy tidbits that have long withered on the vine and useless trivia (do we really need Janet Leigh explaining the technical achievement of Psycho?), this sequel to The Hellfire Club (2018) never gains steam. Sinatra is a cardboard figure who rants a lot, especially after his pal John F. Kennedy reneges on plans to stay with him during a presidential visit to California. Margaret, a zoologist who entertains herself categorizing the Rat Packers (Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford are "omega wolves"), awakens slowly to their alpha leader's true character: "Sinatra was so mercurial and abusive, she no longer thought his ego was that of the mere superstar." Charlie keeps talking himself into seeing the singer in a more positive vein: "Being a sociopath didn't necessarily mean an absence of charisma," he muses, appreciating Sinatra's "great acts of decency and humanity." The best exchange in the book, uttered at a murder scene, seems unintentionally funny: "Where's the phone?" "It's around her neck."
A would-be mystery boasting a smaller-than-life Sinatra.Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-53023-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.
Stephanie Plum’s 31st adventure shows that Trenton’s preeminent fugitive-apprehension agent still has plenty of tricks up her sleeve, and needs every one of them.
The current caseload for Stephanie and Lula—the ex-prostitute file clerk at her cousin Vincent Plum’s bail bonds company, who serves as her unflappable sidekick—begins with two “failures to appear.” Eugene Fleck is suspected of being Robin Hoodie, who robs from the rich and, yes, distributes the proceeds to the poor. Racketeer Bruno Jug, who’s missed his court date on charges of tax evasion, is also suspected of drugging and raping a 14-year-old. But neither of these fugitives can hold a candle to Zoran Djordjevic, aka Fang, a self-proclaimed vampire wanted in connection with the gruesome fate of his late wife and three other missing women. As usual, Stephanie’s personal life is just as helter-skelter as her professional life as a bounty hunter. She’s managed to get herself engaged both to Det. Joe Morelli, of the Trenton PD, and Ranger, a former Special Forces agent who runs a private security firm; she thinks she may be pregnant; and she’s willing to marry the father, whichever of her fiances that turns out to be. On top of it all, her nothingburger schoolmate Herbert Slovinski suddenly pops up at one of the funerals she ferries her Grandma Mazur to, hitting on her relentlessly and gilding his importunities by cleaning and painting her shabby apartment and laying new carpet. Luckily, Lula’s on hand to offer cupcakes that stave off the worst disasters, and whenever this hodgepodge threatens to slow down, another FTA appears, or fails to appear.
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781668003138
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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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