The clever and adventurous heroine dissects a complicated mystery while standing up for women’s rights.
A marriage is imperiled by that age-old threat: the wife’s desire to continue sleuthing.
Most women in 1907 are wives and mothers who stay home to care for their families. But restless former private detective Molly Murphy envies her husband Daniel’s job as a New York City detective. When Sid and Gus, the eccentric neighbors with whom she’s shared past adventures, ask her to help with a clothing drive set up by the Vassar Benevolent Society to take clothes to newly arrived immigrants at Ellis Island, the task plunges her into a dangerous and exciting murder case. Molly's ward, Bridie, a bright young girl Gus and Sid have offered to tutor because she’s chronically underserved at school, is invited along. When they arrive on the island, Bridie accidentally follows a woman who looks like Molly—a woman who later turns out to be the chief suspect in the murder of an unidentified man that Daniel’s investigating. Molly is predisposed to finding Rose McSweeney innocent, for she naturally sees herself in the beautiful Irish immigrant and soon befriends her, much to the disapproval of Daniel, who wants her to stay far from his case. Despite his stern warnings, Molly continues to make inquiries, and she eventually turns up a great deal of new evidence the police would never have found. The investigation moves slowly as it awaits information from Ireland and England, but Molly, undaunted, continues to champion Rose, who may not be what she seems.
The clever and adventurous heroine dissects a complicated mystery while standing up for women’s rights.Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-2508-0805-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.
A woman’s life takes a stunning turn and a wall comes tumbling down in this tense Cold War spy drama.
In Berlin in 1989, the wall is about to crumble, and Anne Simpson’s husband, Stefan Koehler, goes missing. She is a translator working with refugees from the communist bloc, and he is a piano tuner who travels around Europe with orchestras. Or so he claims. German intelligence service the BND and America’s CIA bring her in for questioning, wrongly thinking she’s protecting him. Soon she begins to learn more about Stefan, whom she had met in the Netherlands a few years ago. She realizes he’s a “gregarious musician with easy charm who collected friends like a beachcomber collects shells, keeping a few, discarding most.” Police find his wallet in a canal and his prized zither in nearby bushes but not his body. Has he been murdered? What’s going on? And why does the BND care? If Stefan is alive, he’s in deep trouble, because he’s believed to be working for the Stasi. She’s told “the dead have a way of showing up. It is only the living who hide.” And she’s quite believable when she wonders, “Can you grieve for someone who betrayed you?” Smart and observant, she notes that the reaction by one of her interrogators is “as false as his toupee. Obvious, uncalled for, and easily put on.” Lurking behind the scenes is the Matchmaker, who specializes in finding women—“American. Divorced. Unhappy,” and possibly having access to Western secrets—who will fall for one of his Romeos. Anne is the perfect fit. “The matchmaker turned love into tradecraft,” a CIA agent tells her. But espionage is an amoral business where duty trumps decency, and “deploring the morality of spies is like deploring violence in boxers.” It’s a sentiment John le Carré would have endorsed, but Anne may have the final word.
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64313-865-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
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