This 27th meandering cozy from Brown and her feline co-author (Tall Tail, 2016, etc.) is cluttered with too many characters...
Two modern murders with ties to the 18th century excite the interest of a Virginian busybody and her animal friends, though perhaps not many others.
First, Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen’s beloved pets—cats Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, along with their much maligned corgi companion, Tee Tucker—are on the prowl near their farm in Crozet when they see an eagle flying overhead with a strip of skin and a human eyeball dangling from its talons. Next up is Deputy Cynthia Cooper, who responds to a call about a running transport vehicle with the keys still in the ignition. The missing driver turns up dead and wedged beneath a rock, with half his face torn off and no eye. Then the Waldingfield Beagles, a pack of hunting dogs on a horseless, kill-free hunt, find the body of an African-American investigator with an 18th-century brass chit—a slave pass from one of the area’s former plantation owners, Ewing Garth. As the narrative alternates between the earlier century, including Garth, his family, his “people” (delicacy prevents the Garths from calling them slaves), and his neighbors, and the 20th-century citizens of Albermarle County, more questions arise about what the late private eye was investigating, who robbed a high-end shop of Native American artifacts, who disturbed the graves of an 18th-century couple, and who’s taking potshots at the ever curious Harry. The plot inches forward amid debates about currency in the 18th century and modern lessons about Virginia history and discussions of golf, along with commentary from Mrs. Murphy and friends. A couple of tacked-on resolutions will provide small satisfaction to genre fans.
This 27th meandering cozy from Brown and her feline co-author (Tall Tail, 2016, etc.) is cluttered with too many characters too sketchily drawn. Loyal fans may be chagrined to see the franchise menagerie reduced to little more than a furry Greek chorus.Pub Date: May 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-39249-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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