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DIGGING UP MOMMA

The seventh in this well-received series (He Was Her Man, 1993, etc.) finds the author's journalist heroine Samantha (Sam) Adams in a state of shock after receiving a letter from the mother she had thought deadkilled, along with Sam's fatherin a plane crash when Sam was just eight. The letter asks Sam to come to the La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe and includes details that leave her in no doubt of the writer's identity. Thus begins an unreal saga that has Sam's mother (known for five years in Santa Fe as interior designer Johanna Hall) committing suicide soon after her meeting with Sam. Trying to cope with her grief, the funeral arrangements, and the never-explained reason for her mother's cry for help, Sam moves into Johanna's house in the hills. She gets support from her mother's lawyer LoEllen and from handyman Jesus, a gifted painter who uses old cars as canvases. She also meets suave New York gallery owner Antonio Pomodoro; neighbor Jayvee Paris, who refuses to talk to her; and Jayvee's young daughter Isabel, a replica of Sam at the same age. There's a subplot involving distraught guru Stuart Wonder, and there's nasty detective Victor Vigil, whose mother plays a crucial role when Sam finally confronts the villain in an old turquoise mine where, at last, all is made clear. With its heavily manipulated plotting, its string of exotic nutcases moving things along, and a depressed, nightmare-ridden Sam, this is one of the author's less successful forays. Intriguing unanswered questions, though, plus southwestern lore and a high suspense level, save the day.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-671-89753-5

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Pocket

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1998

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

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

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THE LIFE WE BURY

Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous...

A struggling student’s English assignment turns into a mission to solve a 30-year-old murder.

Joe Talbert has had very few breaks in his 21 years. The son of a single and very alcoholic mother, he’s worked hard to save enough money to leave his home in Austin, Minnesota, for the University of Minnesota. Although he has to leave his autistic younger brother, Jeremy Naylor, to the dubious care of their mother, Joe is determined to beat the odds and get his degree. For an assignment in his English class, he decides to interview Carl Iverson, a man convicted of raping and killing a 14-year-old girl. Carl, who maintains his innocence, is dying of cancer and has been released to a nursing home to end his life in lonely but unrepentant pain. The more Joe learns about Carl—a Vietnam vet with two Purple Hearts and a Silver Cross—the more the young man questions the conviction. Joe’s plan to write a short biography and earn an easy A turns into something more. Even after his mother is arrested for drunk driving and guilt-trips Joe into ransacking his college fund to bail her out, he soldiers on with the project, though her irresponsibility forces him to take Jeremy into his care. But it’s his younger brother who cracks the code of the long-dead murder victim’s secret diary and an attractive neighbor, Lila Nash, who has her own agenda for helping Joe solve the mystery, whatever the risk. 

Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous than championing a bitter old man convicted of a horrific crime.

Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-61614-998-7

Page Count: 300

Publisher: Seventh Street Books

Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014

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