A fast-paced and satisfying tale of the Mafia and murder on old Cape Cod.
The law and the mob clash in 1950s Cape Cod.
As the third volume in Cochran’s series opens, his hero, retired “Cape Cod basketball legend” and special police consultant Rob Caldwell, is dealing with several virtually simultaneous emotional revelations: Rachel, the woman he loves who had long been married to his best friend, has agreed to marry him, and his grandfather, the most influential person in Bound Brook (on Cape Cod), has been murdered and has left a private note for Rob, apologizing for a lifetime of neglect and injustice. The Mafia is making inroads into Bound Brook, which not only involves Rob’s grandfather but also recurring series character Rocco Marini, a former Mafia enforcer who’s been sent to find the daughter of a Mob-connected man in France (not knowing that this woman and her children are deeply connected to some of the people he’ll meet when he brings them to Bound Brook). “The Mafia didn’t like witnesses and tended to take a scorched-earth approach to their problems,” Rocco reflects about his erstwhile employers. The situation is further complicated by the presence of State Trooper Mike O’Connor, who is hopelessly in debt to the local Mafia boss. This is the third entry in the Bound Brook Cape Cod series that has followed the personal and romantic complications of Rob and Rachel in a fictionalized Cape Cod. Cochran assures his readers that each book in the series can be read independently, and he’s right; the author unobtrusively fills new readers in on all the context they need in order to understand the many personal issues at stake in this volume, from the somber undertones of Rob’s relationship drama to the inner personal transformation of Rachel’s former husband, who hopes he can be a better friend than he ever was a husband. Cochran evocatively captures the feeling of a bygone Cape Cod at season’s end, and he fills his story with characters readers will want to cheer—particularly Rocco, who steals the novel.
A fast-paced and satisfying tale of the Mafia and murder on old Cape Cod.Pub Date: June 15, 2021
ISBN: 9798744220389
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Breezy, entertaining characters and a cheeky premise fall prey to too much explanation and an unlikely climax.
An aspiring mystery writer sets out to solve her great-aunt’s murder and inherit an estate.
Twenty-five-year-old Annie Adams has never met her great-aunt Frances, who prefers her small village to busy London. But when a mysterious letter arrives instructing Annie to come to Castle Knoll in Dorset to meet Frances and discuss her role as sole beneficiary of her great-aunt’s estate, Annie can’t resist. Unfortunately, she arrives to find Frances’ worst fears have come true: The elderly woman—who’s been haunted for decades by a fortuneteller’s prediction that this will happen—has been murdered, and her will dictates that she will leave her entire estate to Annie, but only if Annie solves her killing. It’s a cheeky if not exactly believable premise, especially since the local police don’t seem terribly opposed to it. Annie herself is an engaging presence, if a little too blind to the fact that she could be on the killer’s to-do list. Her roll call of suspects is pleasingly long, including but not limited to the local vicar, a one-time paramour of her great-aunt’s; a gardener who grows a lot more than flowers; shady developers and suspicious friends from Frances’ past; and Saxon, Annie’s crafty rival, who inherits the estate himself if he manages to solve the case first. Annie pieces together clues through readings of Frances’ journal, but the story eventually runs aground on the twin rocks of too much explanation and a flimsy climax. Cute dialogue gives way to lengthy exposition, and by the time Frances’ killer is revealed you may well be ready to leave Annie, Dorset, and Castle Knoll behind for the firmer ground of reality. Fans of cozy mysteries are likely to be more forgiving, but if you cast a skeptical eye toward amateur sleuths, this novel won’t change your mind about them.
Breezy, entertaining characters and a cheeky premise fall prey to too much explanation and an unlikely climax.Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9780593474013
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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