This colorful, action-filled mystery presents a novel twist in the continuing search for the identity of England’s most...
A bluestocking proves her worth as a detective in a hunt for Jack the Ripper.
Felicity Carrol is a wealthy young woman with several degrees and a passion for crime solving. When she receives a letter from the mother of her friend Inspector Jackson Davies, asking her to come visit him as "a matter of life and death," Felicity rushes to his side. Although he had initially ignored her when they met during her first case (Felicity Carrol and the Perilous Pursuit, 2019), Jackson soon came to rely on her scientific knowledge. Now Jackson is worn down with overwork and angst over the unsolved Whitechapel murders, and his health has worsened since he read an article about a seemingly identical murder in Placer, Montana. Determined to help him, Felicity sets off for Montana with her friend and servant Helen Wilkins to determine whether the Ripper has relocated to the United States. Money greases her way and allows her to buy a house in Placer as her base. Stepping off the stagecoach, she meets good-looking sheriff Tom Pike and informs him she’s there to investigate the murder of Lily Rawlins. When Pike reluctantly agrees to talk to her, she tells him she plans to write a book of detective fiction using the horrifying crime as the basis. He doubts her story but gives her information and an area tour. When another prostitute is found badly mutilated, Felicity resolves to learn as much as possible, even bribing the undertaker to let her examine the body. Felicity and Pike are undeniably attracted to each other, and although he still doesn’t like her sleuthing, he admits that she does turn up some helpful clues. Pike suspects two men who are blackmailing prostitutes and also suspects anyone, like the butcher, who’s handy with a knife. Felicity, certain that the culprit is someone with medical knowledge, suspects a local doctor. As more murders follow, a frustrated Felicity risks her own life to unmask a mad killer.
This colorful, action-filled mystery presents a novel twist in the continuing search for the identity of England’s most notorious murderer.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64385-289-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous...
A struggling student’s English assignment turns into a mission to solve a 30-year-old murder.
Joe Talbert has had very few breaks in his 21 years. The son of a single and very alcoholic mother, he’s worked hard to save enough money to leave his home in Austin, Minnesota, for the University of Minnesota. Although he has to leave his autistic younger brother, Jeremy Naylor, to the dubious care of their mother, Joe is determined to beat the odds and get his degree. For an assignment in his English class, he decides to interview Carl Iverson, a man convicted of raping and killing a 14-year-old girl. Carl, who maintains his innocence, is dying of cancer and has been released to a nursing home to end his life in lonely but unrepentant pain. The more Joe learns about Carl—a Vietnam vet with two Purple Hearts and a Silver Cross—the more the young man questions the conviction. Joe’s plan to write a short biography and earn an easy A turns into something more. Even after his mother is arrested for drunk driving and guilt-trips Joe into ransacking his college fund to bail her out, he soldiers on with the project, though her irresponsibility forces him to take Jeremy into his care. But it’s his younger brother who cracks the code of the long-dead murder victim’s secret diary and an attractive neighbor, Lila Nash, who has her own agenda for helping Joe solve the mystery, whatever the risk.
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous than championing a bitter old man convicted of a horrific crime.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61614-998-7
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Seventh Street Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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