A slow, complicated mystery that pays off in the end.
Past and present collide as an Australian woman confronts a series of mysteries in Roach’s dramatic debut novel.
In 2006, Lola Harris must return to her small Australian hometown of York for a funeral and to receive her inheritance following the death of her foster mom, Blossom—one of “two tidy deaths” revealed in the novel’s opening line. On the plane, she looks over an article about an exotic dancer and convicted murderer named Lovely Lorrelai, which Blossom sent her before she died, and she hears from a fellow passenger that a serial rapist has apparently returned to the town after an eight-year absence. Back in York, she bumps into familiar figures from her childhood: Perry, a pest; Ben “Walshy” Walsh, whom she still considers the love of her life; Shelley Turner, a friend with dark secrets; and Mary, Lola’s old boss at the local bar, who gives Lola a key that Blossom left her. Each person will play a role in solving the mystery that Lola uncovers, which involves a book of sketches of Lorrelai. In the book’s second part, Lorrelai speaks for herself as the story makes a startling shift to the past—one that will excite and infuriate readers (in the best way) and leads to a cliffhanger in the present day. In general, the novel switches between Lola’s childhood and adulthood quite seamlessly; her memories, interspersed throughout, effectively inform the most urgent events of the present and enrich the cast of characters as well. In Part 2, what feels at first like a digression turns into its own rich story with additional intrigue, although it’s not quite as exciting or dramatic as Part 1. A tense third act successfully ties it all together with a satisfying resolution to each thread. Along the way, Roach finds moments to illustrate nature, as when “bugs dance in the beams” of car headlights. These reflections on the Australian setting are a consistent treat even as tension builds at every turn.
A slow, complicated mystery that pays off in the end.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2021
ISBN: 979-8541064643
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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