Not the best of Robinson’s many Yorkshire mysteries but one of the most heartfelt.
An unexpected discovery sends Detective Superintendent Alan Banks and his Eastvale crew back to investigate a murder that may or may not have involved the Yorkshire Ripper’s last victim back in 1980.
Combing a parcel of land marked as the site of a new shopping mall for evidence of Roman ruins, archaeologist Grace Hutchinson finds some decidedly more recent remains: the skeleton of a man killed only four or five years ago. The roots of the unknown victim’s death go back even further to the murder of Leeds University senior Alice Poole, a political activist who was killed only a few weeks after the Ripper claimed his last known victim. Was she another casualty of the Ripper, or was her killer someone closer to her? Her schoolmate, downstairs neighbor, and ex-boyfriend, Nicholas Hartley, who comes under suspicion from investigating officers DI Stuart Glassco and DC Christopher Marley in 1980, himself suspects Mark Woodcroft, the lover who replaced him before going AWOL, perhaps to Paris. Back in 2019, Banks, along with DS Winsome Jackman and a group of forensic techs, struggles to identify the anonymous victim. Harold Gillespie, who owned the site of Grace Hutchinson’s discovery at the time of the burial, naturally professes to know nothing about the dead man and points out that he would hardly have buried a man he killed on his own property. But the news that Gillespie is himself a retired police officer leads to a chain of further discoveries. Robinson, who died last October, zigzags deftly back and forth between present and past en route to an anticlimactic solution and a truly devastating last sentence.
Not the best of Robinson’s many Yorkshire mysteries but one of the most heartfelt.Pub Date: April 11, 2023
ISBN: 9780062994981
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
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