A leisurely mystery with a memorable protagonist.
A detective’s assistant takes on the case of a missing farmer in Breen’s mystery novel, the third in a series.
Madison, Wisconsin, 2000: For the last two years, former local rock musician Seamus O’Neill has worked for the Ryder Detective Agency, and he’s just taken the state’s private detective exam. It’s part of the 33-year-old’s plan to live more like a real adult, a plan that also includes getting a bed frame for his mattress. Seamus and his sister are driving through the countryside to pick up said bedframe when they come across a case in the middle of the road—literally. A large tractor is tooling down the country lane with no one inside of it; it seems the farmer who was driving it, Vernon Cooper, has evaporated into thin air. What’s more, the Coopers are somewhat notorious in Dane County for disappearing—the first to go, Stephen Cooper, vanished from his fields a century ago. People suspect everything from mental illness to a simple case of running away, but Seamus senses there is more to Vernon’s disappearance than meets the eye. Seamus technically isn’t licensed yet, but, as a witness to the crime, he can’t help but snoop around a little; as he digs into the case of the missing farmer, the fields around Madison start to turn up more than just last year’s corn husks. Seamus makes for an unlikely detective; a troublemaker in his youth, he’s now something of a harmless slacker—usually hung-over, unable to drive, shuffling into work late with a breakfast of “two loaves of day-old bread [bought] at Sam’s Subs.” One wishes the plot itself were a bit livelier, but it unfolds with a sluggishness characteristic of Seamus himself, a fact which, when coupled with the fairly minor mystery at the center of it, does not make for a page-turning read. The care with which Breen evokes the Wisconsin setting provides a fair amount of charm, however, and fans of the previous volumes are unlikely to be disappointed by this latest outing.
A leisurely mystery with a memorable protagonist.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9798986208374
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Dutch Hollow Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.
Lt. Eve Dallas’ 63rd futuristic case is less a whodunit than a manhunt for an unusually sympathetic killer.
Thirteen years ago, way back in 2048, scientific genius Steve Redman—father of the Banner-Wyst corporation’s Rainmaker Project—narrowly escaped death in a gas explosion that killed his pregnant wife and infant son and 200 other residents of their New York City apartment building the night before he planned to report his suspicions about the company to the FBI. Now the bill is coming due for Banner-Wyst. The first death to be discovered is that of Lawrence Chu, Redman’s colleague and trusted friend, whose tenure as director of bioengineering science ends when he’s beaten to death. For quite a while, Dallas and her partner, Det. Delia Peabody, know less about this mystery than their readers do. But when Ezra Dent, a consultant to Banner-Wyst who worked with Redman and Chu back in the day, is murdered in exactly the same ferocious way, Dallas and Peabody, with help from Roarke, Dallas’ tech-billionaire husband, promptly put the pieces together and determine who they’re looking for. The search for Redman, who went AWOL from his hospital bed without a trace six years ago, has its own challenges. So does Dallas’ attempt to get cooperation from partners Calvin Banner and Jacob Wyst, who are clearly in the crosshairs of a killer who seems a lot less monstrous than they are. If the breaks in the case are suspiciously convenient in arriving, readers can pride themselves on taking sides against a mega-corporation whose self-avowed ecological saintliness is undermined by its leaders’ underhanded dealing.
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414564
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.
It takes a quirky sleuth to solve a baffling closed-door murder.
The author himself or, more accurately, some version of him, walks the reader through a “gruesome murder” that occurred in a rural farming village. At the center of the crime is the wealthy Ichiyanagi family, including the widow Itoko and her five children. The “heinous crime” occurs in the evening after the festive wedding of eldest son Kenzo to schoolteacher Katsuko. Yokomizo, part narrator and part raconteur, liberally shares digressions such as the fact that his favorite British author is A.A. Milne, who wrote The Red House Mystery as well as the books about Winnie-the-Pooh. Written in 1946 but set in 1937 before the devastation of World War II, this is the first novel featuring Kosuke Kindaichi, the legendary detective who appeared in more than 70 stories by Yokomizo. If Yokomizo is the Japanese Agatha Christie, Kindaichi may seem the Japanese Hercule Poirot—although actually, given his unkempt hair and apparently distracted manner, he’s more a cross between Poirot and Columbo. Shrewdly, his entrance is delayed until midway through the novel, after the police have stalled and both the family and the reader are anxious for a solution. The narrator’s garrulous charm, in a mystery long on logistics and forensic clues but short on detailed character portraits or extended interactions, is a key to the novel’s success, leavening the more intricate pieces of the puzzle. Armchair detectives will welcome the helpful character list that precedes the story.
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781805336549
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
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