Both a complex thriller and a well-drawn period piece.
A pair of detectives contend with corruption while trying to solve a bizarre pair of seemingly unrelated murders in Elin’s mystery.
In 1969, police detective James Plishka’s life suddenly gets more complicated. The widower, who lives in Lackawanna, New York, is enjoying his burgeoning relationship with local waitress Jennifer Simon, but he’s having trouble connecting with his troubled teen son, Robert. His chief gives him a new trainee: Tom Baldwin, the only Black officer on the Lackawanna force. Baldwin, a former college basketball star, shoulders his own burden—he was promoted over white cops with more experience, which isn’t earning him any new friends. A reluctant Plishka brings Baldwin up to date on his cases, including the mysterious death of honor student Sarah Simpson. Then a call comes in about a body found at the cinder drop, where Bethlehem Steel dumps molten slag into Lake Erie. The deceased is identified as radical priest and lawyer Martin Goezina, who has cases pending against both the steel company over environmental concerns and the city regarding a proposed housing development. The detectives discover a connection between Simpson and Goezina—they’re both tied into a book the latter was writing that would expose government officials, businessmen, and drug dealers in the U.S. and Honduras. They have so many suspects and so little time. The author spent a quarter-century in the entertainment business, and his cinematic vision is evident in this debut novel. He vividly captures that pivotal moment when, amid a counterculture revolution, citizens started to question the noxious side effects of the U.S. steel industry. Racism plays a prominent role in this novel (“There are about ten thousand very angry white people in this city who would do almost anything to stop that housing development”), though the most conspicuous evil on display is greed. Elin’s relatable protagonists are both at personal crossroads, earning readers’ sympathy as they gather a diverse team of allies, doggedly plugging along until the case reaches a shocking but satisfying conclusion.
Both a complex thriller and a well-drawn period piece.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9798218227463
Page Count: -
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
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
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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