The secret is out; a teenage sleuth makes a welcome debut on the crime scene.
In this mystery, an aunt’s deathbed confession compels a high schooler to turn up the heat on a cold case.
Officer Donnie Ray Carr, 26, disappeared without a trace in 1943. Eight years later, “barely seventeen” Gracie Dawson receives shocking news at her Aunt Clara’s hospital deathbed. First, she is told she has a heretofore undisclosed cousin, a little boy. Second, someone named William killed Carr. As to the former, Clara begs, “Find my little boy, Gracie.” As to the latter, all Clara will cryptically say is “Norton Train Station, September 1943.” Gracie’s father happens to be named William; he cheated on her mother, leading to a nasty divorce. But Clara has left everything to Gracie, including her “stupefying secrets,” and so the teen is determined to do right by her. With the help of her boyfriend, Obie Sayer, whose father is the local police chief and who hopes to assume that role someday, she turns amateur sleuth. She visits the Norton Train Station, where Gracie learns somebody left an infant in 1943. Clara is identified as the mother. But who is the father? And is the baby’s paternity connected to Carr’s disappearance? Gracie and Obie’s “after-death meddling” yields a hidden suitcase that contains a birth certificate identifying the illegitimate boy’s father: William Avery Dollarhide, a state senator who’s on “top of the heap” as part of the local foundry empire. McCall reveals this early on, which may frustrate armchair detectives. But this well-written small-town noir is a brisk read that should captivate both YA readers for its plucky teenage hero as well as adults with a penchant for crime stories that revolve around shadowy figures in high places. In this series opener, Gracie is a believable and empathetic character. She is much like Teresa Wright in Alfred Hitchcock’s film Shadow of a Doubt,who discovers, as Gracie puts it, “there’s such a wideness to the world.” Gracie is in over her head but in thrall to the thrill of having been entrusted with her aunt’s confession: “Of course, I don’t really know anything but the idea gives me goosebumps all the same.”
The secret is out; a teenage sleuth makes a welcome debut on the crime scene.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-73755-530-8
Page Count: 158
Publisher: JJ Publishers, LLC
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Breezy, entertaining characters and a cheeky premise fall prey to too much explanation and an unlikely climax.
An aspiring mystery writer sets out to solve her great-aunt’s murder and inherit an estate.
Twenty-five-year-old Annie Adams has never met her great-aunt Frances, who prefers her small village to busy London. But when a mysterious letter arrives instructing Annie to come to Castle Knoll in Dorset to meet Frances and discuss her role as sole beneficiary of her great-aunt’s estate, Annie can’t resist. Unfortunately, she arrives to find Frances’ worst fears have come true: The elderly woman—who’s been haunted for decades by a fortuneteller’s prediction that this will happen—has been murdered, and her will dictates that she will leave her entire estate to Annie, but only if Annie solves her killing. It’s a cheeky if not exactly believable premise, especially since the local police don’t seem terribly opposed to it. Annie herself is an engaging presence, if a little too blind to the fact that she could be on the killer’s to-do list. Her roll call of suspects is pleasingly long, including but not limited to the local vicar, a one-time paramour of her great-aunt’s; a gardener who grows a lot more than flowers; shady developers and suspicious friends from Frances’ past; and Saxon, Annie’s crafty rival, who inherits the estate himself if he manages to solve the case first. Annie pieces together clues through readings of Frances’ journal, but the story eventually runs aground on the twin rocks of too much explanation and a flimsy climax. Cute dialogue gives way to lengthy exposition, and by the time Frances’ killer is revealed you may well be ready to leave Annie, Dorset, and Castle Knoll behind for the firmer ground of reality. Fans of cozy mysteries are likely to be more forgiving, but if you cast a skeptical eye toward amateur sleuths, this novel won’t change your mind about them.
Breezy, entertaining characters and a cheeky premise fall prey to too much explanation and an unlikely climax.Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9780593474013
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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