THE BEGONIA KILLER

A twisty detective thriller featuring ruthless gardening and possibly worse.

This third installment of Bond’s mystery series finds private investigator Molly McGill back in placid northern New Jersey. Local housewife Martha Dodson hires her to prove that her neighbor Kent Kirkland kidnapped two boys who’ve been missing for months—and is currently holding them in a bedroom above his garage. It’s probably just a busybody’s idle fancy; the police believe that one of the boys may be dead and that the other is in Venezuela. There’s also nothing especially suspicious about Kirkland aside from an apparent delivery of a scooter to his house and a weird incident when he destroyed his own begonias in a fit of rage. Molly worms her way into his house, posing as a horticulturist, and finds that the mystery bedroom contains vegetable seedlings, not captive boys—but Kirkland proves so angry, controlling, and odd that she sticks with the investigation. She’s helped by detective Art Judd, who brushes off Martha’s theories but still supplies leads to Molly, in part because the two have taken a romantic shine to each other. Meanwhile, Molly parents 14-year-old Zach and 6-year-old Karen, assisted but not really helped by her cantankerous live-in grandmother. After the special-ops fireworks that Molly set off with colleagues Quaid Rafferty and Durwood Oak Jones in The Anarchy of the Mice (2020), this solo outing showcases a quieter kind of sleuthing. Bond shows how Molly deploys her psychology training in nerve-wracking scenes in which she improvises strategies to get information or derail violence. He tells the story with his usual well-paced plotting, sharply etched characters, and atmospheric prose: “It was dusk, that time before exterior lights wink on when houses seem to watch the street with slit eyes,” Molly observes of Kirkland’s pretty yet sinister subdivision. There’s also raucous humor (“Do you take advantage of the prostitutes when you book them?” Granny asks a mortified Art, inspired by her gritty TV police dramas). The result is a diverting mystery with a beguiling, shrewd, and tough hero.

An entertaining private-eye yarn with off-kilter skulduggery and domestic comedy.