A celebratory display of the many things an accomplished veteran can do with the short mystery.
Eighteen stories, 15 of them reprints from 1973-2020, from the prolific British writer equally distinguished by his inventiveness and his polished craftsmanship.
The oldest tale, “The Bathroom,” is a fictionalization of the career of serial wife-killer George Joseph Smith most noteworthy for the anecdote it inspires in Lovesey’s introduction; its true-crime counterpart, “A Tale of Three Tubs,” is more beguiling and compelling. The historical interest is also the strongest element in “The Deadliest Tale of All,” in which Edgar Allan Poe meets the man who plans to write his obituary. And the trimmings in “A Three Pie Problem,” in which Superintendent Peter Diamond eludes his visiting relatives by investigating the poisoning of a retired accountant at his own Christmas party, shine more brightly than its payoff. Mostly, though, the stories are a demonstration of how many things Lovesey can do well. A burglar who wins a contest that sends him to Marrakesh in “Lady Luck” suffers an exquisitely well-calibrated payback. The veteran romance novelist tempted from her midlist purgatory to ghostwrite a roman à clef about a thinly disguised celebrity in “Ghosted” smells a rat just in time. In “The Homicidal Hat,” another mystery writer gets unexpected help from her crabby husband designing the winning entry in the cozy mystery conference Malice Domestic’s contest for most creative hat. “Formidophobia” traces the roots of the narrator’s fear of scarecrows to a dread secret that conceals still darker secrets. The hanging of a theatrical troupe’s leading lady introduces a surprisingly orthodox whodunit in “Gaslighting.” And the ending of the title story, in which the impending loss of their monastery leads to the poisoning of two monks, is more heartwarming than surprising.
A celebratory display of the many things an accomplished veteran can do with the short mystery.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-641-29361-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
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
So, Paradise isn’t paradise, and the Parker legacy lives on.
Parker’s Jesse Stone series continues with more trouble in Paradise, Massachusetts.
Police Chief Jesse Stone does a welfare check at the urging of a local citizen named Matthew Peebles and discovers a dead body in a room piled high with trash and old Polaroids depicting murder victims, either garroted or shot in the head. Who werethese victims? Chief Stone improbably keeps the investigation local—no need to complicate the story with the state police or the FBI—and that helps maintain the small-town flavor of this entertaining tale. Stone hires a new cop, Derek Tate, for his understaffed department. But to put it mildly, Tate is a poor fit. Boss and newcomer have radically different concepts of policing: Stone sees himself as a servant of his community, while Tate only wants to catch criminals and crack heads. At one point, Stone asks him what he did on his shift: “Did you give a tourist directions? Did you help an old lady cross the street or get a little girl’s cat out of a tree? Anything at all like that?” Tate replies “That’s not what real cops do,” and proceeds to alienate “beloved institutional figure” Daisy, cafe owner and longtime provider of donuts and muffins to Paradise’s finest. Indeed, Tate could be a model fascist, and Stone’s biggest mistake is not firing him. Meanwhile, Peebles fears for his life because of his “aging mobster” great uncle, who just might have something to do with all those murders. If Peebles says anything to the cops, he knows he’s a dead man. Hell, he’s probably doomed anyway. Stone is a stand-up cop who puts his life on the line for the town he loves, and his dealings with friends and colleagues are fun to witness: “I’m the chief. I’m supposed to tell you what to do,” he tells Molly Crane, his deputy chief. “It’s adorable that you think that,” she replies. And when all Paradise cops are banned from Daisy’s cafe because of Tate’s stupidity, Stone navigates treacherous territory while showing respect. This is Farnsworth’s first entry in the series created by Robert Parker, and fans will be pleased.
So, Paradise isn’t paradise, and the Parker legacy lives on.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593544761
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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