A truly exceptional detective and a first-rate supporting cast kindle this straightforward mystery.
An amateur sleuth’s latest case unfolds aboard a Caribbean cruise in this installment of Dieker’s mystery series.
Part-time theater director Larkin Day needs a vacation from solving murders. She joins a weeklong, nerd-themed cruise that her best friend, freelance writer Anni Morgan, made possible with her cruise loyalty points. They bring along their boyfriends; Larkin’s mother and her mother’s girlfriend book their own tickets for a cheaper, porthole-less cabin. This is a cruise designed to allow passengers to revel in their nerdiness, be it cosplay or a love of mathematics. Famous fantasy author Adamantine Darcy, on the cruise as a special guest, apparently divines what Larkin does best; the writer wants her sleuthing advice on a murder-related subject. (“It’s for a book,” Adamantine’s assistant says.) Later, when Adamantine seemingly vanishes and a body turns up, Larkin may get another opportunity to put her skillset to use and again unmask a killer. Dieker does an impressive job of further developing the mostly established cast, introducing new and returning characters and easing series newcomers into the story. (Eirwen, a trans woman, is brutally but refreshingly honest, and Anni’s magician boyfriend, Elliott Fox, makes a handy sidekick for Larkin in detective mode.) The gumshoe herself possesses a yearning to understand people and things and a tireless charm, both of which belie her self-professed plainness. The book has plentiful nerdish (mostly technical) details on offer, from “networked sex toys” to the topical concern of reliance on artificial intelligence. These elements pair well with the witty dialogue (Larkin’s epiphany: “Wait. Maybe I’m the smartest person I know, at least for today”), though the characters’ habit of earmarking their own puns wears thin. The fun is in the rich characterizations; the whodunit aspect of the story is somewhat lacking and predictable.
A truly exceptional detective and a first-rate supporting cast kindle this straightforward mystery.Pub Date: July 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781959565239
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Shortwave Media
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.
When two women who share a birthday meet, a journalist becomes the subject of her own true-crime mystery.
On their 45th birthdays, Josie Fair and Alix Summer meet at a pub and discover they were born not only on the same day, but in the same hospital. Alix is a successful journalist, and Josie convinces Alix that her story is worth telling: Josie met her husband when she was 13 and he was 40. “I can see that maybe I was being used, that maybe I was even being groomed?” she confesses to Alix. “But that feeling of being powerful, right at the start, when I was still in control. I miss that sometimes. I really do. And what I’d like, more than anything, is to get it back.” From this premise Alix creates a Netflix series, Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin! which investigates Josie’s life as she reconciles what happened to her as a teen and seeks a new path. With the story unfinished, the narrative unfolds in the present tense, with prose that jingles like song lyrics: “He turns to see if the girl is behind him, and sees her wishy-washy, wavy-wavy, in double vision through the glass windows of the hotel.” Alix is both intrigued and repulsed by Josie, but she initially gives her the benefit of the doubt. After all, Alix’s husband, Nathan, has a drinking problem, and Alix knows what it’s like to be reluctant to leave a bad situation. But Josie seems more interested in being part of Alix’s seemingly glamorous life than she is in fixing her own, and when three people end up dead and Alix’s life is turned upside down, the evidence points to Josie—and turns the TV series into a murder mystery. Transcripts from Alix’s interviews alternate with the narrative, offering increasingly varied perspectives on Josie’s story as told by her neighbors, friends, and family members. With so many versions of events, the ending shatters, leaving readers to decide whose is the truth.
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781982179007
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
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