This tale offers a promising foundation for a series featuring a strong, complicated investigator.
A battered ex-cop seeking a new life runs smack into his past in this philosophical thriller.
In this series opener, Buchanan introduces readers to former cop Sean “Mick” McPherson, still recovering from a past trauma. His partner, Sam, was killed by a sniper in an ambush. But Sam may have been the lucky one. In the car crash following the death of Sam, who was driving, Mick was left temporarily paralyzed. While he regained mobility, he has been wracked by survivor’s guilt for the past five years. That’s why he retired and has been working at the Pines & Quill writers retreat, run by his older sister, Libby, and her husband, Niall MacCullough. This month’s group of writers includes psychic Cynthia Winters; bitter, divorced Fran Davies; wheelchair-bound potter Emma Benton; and standoffish Jason Hughes. Something changes in Mick when he meets Emma. She finds herself falling for him as well. But Mick doesn’t realize that he has a tie to Jason, a serial killer who comes to the retreat with revenge in mind. Cynthia picks up on Jason’s malice; fearing her abilities, he decides to kill her. But resident dog Hemingway comes to her rescue. After narrowly avoiding death, Jason decides to abduct Emma and use her as bait to lure Mick. Then it’s a race for Mick to rescue Emma in time. Buchanan, a retired holistic health practitioner and life coach and the author of The Business of Being (2018), has made a strong transition from nonfiction to fiction with her first novel. Yes, her former jobs leak through with mentions of therapeutic methods. But that truly doesn’t affect the narrative. The author has created a stable of likable, well-rounded characters, starting with the damaged Mick. Especially winning is Irish wolfhound Hemingway, who speaks volumes without saying a word. Jason is an unhinged, single-dimensional loon, to use a nonpsychological term, and is easy to root against. Buchanan’s narrative is well paced, flying right along. But the book ends abruptly, with the author hanging on to certain elements, such as Jason’s accomplice, for use in the series’ sequel. This leaves the volume with a slightly unfinished feel. Still, overall, the author has delivered an exciting beginning to an intriguing series.
This tale offers a promising foundation for a series featuring a strong, complicated investigator.Pub Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-68463-071-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: SparkPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.
Stephanie Plum’s 31st adventure shows that Trenton’s preeminent fugitive-apprehension agent still has plenty of tricks up her sleeve, and needs every one of them.
The current caseload for Stephanie and Lula—the ex-prostitute file clerk at her cousin Vincent Plum’s bail bonds company, who serves as her unflappable sidekick—begins with two “failures to appear.” Eugene Fleck is suspected of being Robin Hoodie, who robs from the rich and, yes, distributes the proceeds to the poor. Racketeer Bruno Jug, who’s missed his court date on charges of tax evasion, is also suspected of drugging and raping a 14-year-old. But neither of these fugitives can hold a candle to Zoran Djordjevic, aka Fang, a self-proclaimed vampire wanted in connection with the gruesome fate of his late wife and three other missing women. As usual, Stephanie’s personal life is just as helter-skelter as her professional life as a bounty hunter. She’s managed to get herself engaged both to Det. Joe Morelli, of the Trenton PD, and Ranger, a former Special Forces agent who runs a private security firm; she thinks she may be pregnant; and she’s willing to marry the father, whichever of her fiances that turns out to be. On top of it all, her nothingburger schoolmate Herbert Slovinski suddenly pops up at one of the funerals she ferries her Grandma Mazur to, hitting on her relentlessly and gilding his importunities by cleaning and painting her shabby apartment and laying new carpet. Luckily, Lula’s on hand to offer cupcakes that stave off the worst disasters, and whenever this hodgepodge threatens to slow down, another FTA appears, or fails to appear.
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781668003138
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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
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