Even so, fans won’t, and shouldn’t, hesitate to dive back into a past in which whodunits could be so unsettlingly evocative...
Dr. Gideon Fell, that beloved, avuncular detective from the genre’s golden age, returns in this reprint of his second case, originally published in 1933.
Otto Penzler’s brief introduction, which emphasizes Carr’s unrivaled reputation nearly 50 years after his death as the master of the locked-room mystery, hails this one for including “an impossible crime.” The murder here doesn’t involve a locked room; instead, it pushes whimsical absurdities to a sinister extreme. As the tale begins, Dr. Fell, just arrived in London, hears of two notable thefts: the disappearance of an original Poe story from the possession of Sir William Bitton, who’d unearthed it in one of Poe’s homes in Philadelphia, and a rash of thefts of headgear—a police constable’s helmet, a barrister’s wig, Sir William’s top hat—by some wag who relocates his prizes to new places sure to offend the victims and amuse everyone else. News swiftly follows that Sir William’s nephew, journalist Philip Driscoll, who’s been milking the Mad Hatter story for all it’s worth, has been found dead at Traitors’ Gate, in the densely fogged-up Tower of London, stabbed or shot by a crossbolt Sir William’s brother and sister-in-law, Lester and Laura Bitton, had recently brought home from a trip abroad. As usual with Carr (The Hungry Goblin, 1972, etc.), the plotting is denser than a London particular. But this time there’s nothing impossible about the mystery, just plenty of outré details. In truth, this is middling Carr, unable to sustain its atmosphere through the increasingly labored revelations of its second half, and its principal red herring, the theft of all those hats, is more vivid, more baffling, and more logically satisfying in its elucidation than the murder of Philip Driscoll—a flaw Carr duly corrected in the masterpieces that followed: The Three Coffins, The Burning Court, The Crooked Hinge, and, as Carter Dickson, The Judas Window.
Even so, fans won’t, and shouldn’t, hesitate to dive back into a past in which whodunits could be so unsettlingly evocative in their setups and so unabashedly brainy in their solutions.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61316-133-3
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Penzler Publishers
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 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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