This sequel to The Cracked Spine (2016) is rich in Scottish dialect and eccentric characters, including a well-meaning...
A murder at a Scottish castle reveals a murky past.
Kansas transplant Delaney Nichols and her protective landlord drive to Castle Doune outside Edinburgh to do a favor for her boss, Edwin MacAlister. Purveyor of rare books and manuscripts, Edwin owns The Cracked Spine bookstore in Edinburgh, and he’s asked Delaney to pick up a vintage comic book from a William Wallace re-enactor. They find the re-enactor in full costume and as dead as Wallace, with the comic book half-hidden on the castle roof. The dead man, Billy Armstrong, was the son of Gordon Armstrong, an old friend of Edwin’s, though the two men fell out 50 years ago and Gordon supposedly died in a recent fire. Almost immediately, Gordon shows up at the bookstore, very much alive and smelling of fish from the market where he works under an assumed name, accusing Edwin of having something to do with his son's death. Assisted by her boyfriend, Tom, Delaney returns to the castle to try to find a paper—a handwritten account of why Gordon has been in hiding—that was supposedly inside the book. Instead they turn up a dirk—a foot-long Scottish knife—and a business card printed with the name “Grizel Sheehy, Bagpipes,” that has Billy’s last name written on the back. Delaney’s fondness for Edwin leads her to lie to the police, nose her way into other people’s business, and walk into danger as she attempts to find out not only who killed Billy, but what really happened 50 years ago to come between Gordon, Edwin, and other members of a secret society. Is the real message to Edwin the dirk that Delaney found? How many times will the name William figure into past and present mysteries? Did Grizel kill Billy with her bagpipes? And will all the literary voices—quotations from fictional characters—help Delaney find the answers she seeks or get her killed?
This sequel to The Cracked Spine (2016) is rich in Scottish dialect and eccentric characters, including a well-meaning heroine who brings on most of her own troubles.Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-05749-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
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 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
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