An engagingly witty whodunit brimming with inventive twists and turns.
In Stagner’s mystery novel, a pair of retired sisters find a dead body on their property and become the prime suspects in a murder investigation.
Sisters Claire Browning and Avery Halverson decide to retire from their stressful jobs as legal assistants to a quiet home in rural East Texas nestled within a gated community called Rancho Exotica. Their bucolic tranquility is shattered when the book’s titular “venue” of vultures leads them to a dead body in a densely wooded section of their property. The deceased turns out to be a neighbor, Thorne Mondae, who was clearly murdered—he was found with a hunting arrow lodged in his heart. Because Claire recently had an angry confrontation with him (she yelled at him for trespassing on her property while hunting), she becomes a person of interest in his murder investigation. She’s so fretful she’ll be arrested that she withholds from the police a video her trail camera took of the killer—a “shadowy figure” neither of the sisters can identify—since it captures Claire as well, placing her at the scene of the crime. Claire and Avery join forces with Jay Vidocq, the dreamy head of security at Rancho Exotica and a former Dallas homicide detective. As the investigation deepens, the list of suspects grows—Thorne turns out to have been an unsavory man with a dark past—and the relationship between Avery and Jay turns romantic. Much of this crime drama is deeply formulaic and melodramatic; here, Avery explains her turn as an amateur sleuth: “When Thorne Mondae was murdered in our forest and we became suspects, our world turned upside down. We need to restore that world to its rightful position. That’s why I want so much to discover who killed Mr. Mondae.” But this delightfully cozy detective story, which is as humorous as it is intelligently conceived, does have a lightsome companionability to it. Readers who enjoy the work of Agatha Christie are sure to like this novel as well—it’s fun and largely undemanding entertainment.
An engagingly witty whodunit brimming with inventive twists and turns.Pub Date: June 6, 2024
ISBN: 9798350947991
Page Count: 270
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.
The feds must protect an accused criminal and an orphaned girl.
Maybe you’ve met him before as protagonist of The 6:20 Man (2022): Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine, who’d had the dubious fortune to tangle with “the girl on the train,” is now assigned by his homeland security boss to protect Danny Glass, who's awaiting trial on multiple RICO charges in Washington state. Devine has what it takes: He “was a closer, snooper, fixer, investigator,” and, when necessary, a killer. These skills are on full display as the deaths of three key witnesses grind justice to a temporary halt. Glass has a 12-year-old niece, Betsy Odom, and each is the other’s only living relative—her parents recently died of an apparent drug overdose. The FBI has temporary guardianship of Betsy, who's a handful. She tells Travis that though she’s not yet 13, she's 28 in “life-shit years.” The financially well-heeled Glass wants to be her legal guardian with an eye to eventual adoption, but what are his real motives? And what happens to her if he's convicted? Meanwhile, Betsy insists that her parents never touched drugs, and she begs Travis to find out how they really died. This becomes part of a mission that oozes danger. The small town of Ricketts has a woman mayor who’s full of charm on the surface, but deeply corrupt and deadly when crossed. She may be linked to a subversive group called "12/24/65," as in 1865, when the Ku Klux Klan beast was born. Blood flows, bombs explode, and people perish, both good guys and not-so-good guys. Readers might ponder why in fiction as well as in life, it sometimes seems necessary for many to die so one may live. And what about the girl on the train? She's not necessary to the plot, but she's a fun addition as she pops in and out of the pages, occasionally leaving notes for Travis. Maybe she still wants him dead.
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781538757901
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.
A routine break-in at the home of Sûreté homicide chief Armand Gamache leads slowly but surely to the revelation of a potentially calamitous threat to all Québec.
At first it seems as if nothing at all triggered the burglar alarm at Gamache’s home in Three Pines; it was literally a false alarm. It’s not till he receives a package containing his summer jacket that Gamache realizes someone really did get into his house, choosing to steal exactly this one item and return it with a cryptic note referring to “some malady…water” and “Angelica stems.” Having already refused to meet with Jeanne Caron, chief of staff to Marcus Lauzon, a powerful politician who’s already taken vengeance on Gamache and his family for not expunging his child’s criminal record, Gamache now agrees to meet with Charles Langlois, a marine biologist with ties to Caron who confesses to a leading role in stealing Gamache’s jacket. Their meeting ends inconclusively for Gamache, who’s convinced that Langlois is hiding something weighty, and all too conclusively for Langlois, who’s killed by a hit-and-run driver as he leaves. The news that Langlois had been investigating a water supply near the abbey of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups sends Gamache scurrying off to the abbey, where the plot steadily thickens until he’s led to ask how “an old recipe for Chartreuse” can possibly be connected to “a terrorist plot to poison Québec’s drinking water.” That’s a great question, and answering it will take the second half of this story, which spins ever more intricate connections among leading players that become deeply unsettling.
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9781250328137
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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