A satisfying mystery pleasantly told.
This second installment of a series offers another adventure for a crime-solving architect and his friend’s talented cat.
Mary Questman—a wealthy widow, noted philanthropist, and owner of Mister Puss, the beautiful Abyssinian cat who just might have the ability to speak—receives a letter from the new rector at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in her hometown of Dumont, Wisconsin. When Joyce Hibbard requests that Mary fund a project to either restore or rebuild the soon-to-be-condemned St. Alban’s church building, the philanthropist insists that she will only participate if her friend and noted local architect Marson Miles is involved. While Joyce is walking Marson and his husband, Brody Norris—who is also the partner in his architectural firm, Miles & Norris, as well as something of an amateur sleuth—around the property, they come across the body of their new friend, David Lowell, the choir director and organist of St. Alban’s. But who would want the choir director dead? Could it be one of the new people in town: Joyce or her husband-of-convenience, Curtis—a wealthy gay lawyer whom Marson knew in college and who recently asked David on a date? Or Curtis’ friend and former lover, the famous ballet dancer Yevgeny Krymov? With the help of the local sheriff, Thomas Simms, and the preternatural Mister Puss, Brody will have to don his detective coat once again to catch the killer before anyone else drops dead. Craft’s (FlabberGassed, 2018, etc.) prose, with its affectionate digs at gossipy Episcopal parishes and affluent gay culture, is cheery in a way that keeps the novel from ever getting too dark, even with the murderous subject matter. After Joyce, who came to religion late in life (and perhaps not because of God), quotes Philippians at a dinner party, her husband says, “You’re laying it on a bit thick, aren’t you, Poopsie?” The characters are all compellingly odd, operating in a gray area between noble and self-serving that will keep readers guessing at their underlying motives. While the author hardly reinvents the wheel, this cozy setting with its nosy inhabitants makes for a lovely place to spend a few hours trying to figure out whodunit and why.
A satisfying mystery pleasantly told.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-578-52330-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Questover Press
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose...
Sparks (The Longest Ride, 2013, etc.) serves up another heaping helping of sentimental Southern bodice-rippage.
Gone are the blondes of yore, but otherwise the Sparks-ian formula is the same: a decent fellow from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches falls in love with a decent girl from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches—and is still suffering the consequences. The guy is innately intelligent but too quick to throw a punch, the girl beautiful and scary smart. If you hold a fatalistic worldview, then you’ll know that a love between them can end only in tears. If you hold a Sparks-ian one, then true love will prevail, though not without a fight. Voilà: plug in the character names, and off the story goes. In this case, Colin Hancock is the misunderstood lad who’s decided to reform his hard-knuckle ways but just can’t keep himself from connecting fist to face from time to time. Maria Sanchez is the dedicated lawyer in harm’s way—and not just because her boss is a masher. Simple enough. All Colin has to do is punch the partner’s lights out: “The sexual harassment was bad enough, but Ken was a bully as well, and Colin knew from his own experience that people like that didn’t stop abusing their power unless someone made them. Or put the fear of God into them.” No? No, because bound up in Maria’s story, wrinkled with the doings of an equally comely sister, there’s a stalker and a closet full of skeletons. Add Colin’s back story, and there’s a perfect couple in need of constant therapy, as well as a menacing cop. Get Colin and Maria to smooching, and the plot thickens as the storylines entangle. Forget about love—can they survive the evil that awaits them out in the kudzu-choked woods?
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, stickily sweet but irresistible.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2061-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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