Next book

A GATHERING OF SECRETS

Another rewarding crime novel that looks beyond the idealized image of the Amish.

Kate Burkholder (Down a Dark Road, 2017, etc.), police chief of Painters Mill, Ohio, is called to the scene of a fire at the home of Miriam and Gideon Gingerich, a well-regarded Amish couple with four children.

Their barn has burned to the ground, and their eldest son, Danny, is missing. Kate’s lover, John Tomasetti, an agent for the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, accompanies her to the scene, which the fire chief pronounces suspicious. The family is hoping that Danny, who is passing through Rumspringa, the time when Amish teens sow some wild oats before settling down, is out with friends, but their hopes are crushed when his body is found in the barn. Not only was the fire deliberately set, but Danny had been locked in the tack room. Everyone says Danny was a hardworking, easygoing young man, but as Kate looks for motives she uncovers some very nasty secrets. The next-door neighbor is a felon with a bad temper. Danny was virtually engaged to marry lovely Luane Raber, yet Kate senses she is holding something back. Luane’s father says Danny had had a fight with his best friend, Milo Hershberger, a horse trainer under the bann for his wild ways, who admits that Danny was not always a nice guy. "You want to know about Danny the Saint?" he says. "I'd suggest you talk to Emma Miller....But I reckon it's a little too late." The Amish are very closemouthed about their lives, and Emma’s parents are unwilling to speculate as to why she might have killed herself six month earlier, though her former boyfriend suggests that Danny may have raped her. Kate knows all too well from her own life what the veil of silence and the blame attached to a woman's sexual behavior can do to a person. Certain that revenge is the motive, she wonders whether Danny may have had more victims than Emma.

Another rewarding crime novel that looks beyond the idealized image of the Amish.

Pub Date: July 10, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-250-12131-8

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Minotaur

Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018

Next book

A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

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

Next book

BADLANDS

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

Close Quickview