Lyerly’s protagonist is engaging enough to deserve a better-plotted sequel.
A theater owner with Tourette syndrome teams up with the local police chief to solve an onstage murder.
Ellie Marlowe and Bill Starlin’s friendship goes all the way back to their childhood in Avalon, when Ellie was best friends with Bill’s sister, Ava. As adults, they went their separate ways, Ellie to a high-powered corporate job and Bill to the Massachusetts State Police. Now they’re both back in their hometown, Ellie to her dream job running the Kaleidoscope Theater and Bill as head of Avalon’s two-person police force. Married to Darlene, Bill has a bunch of kids; Ellie and husband Mike are trying for their first. As she works behind the scenes, Ellie keeps her tics under reasonable control until the death of lead actor Reginald Thornton IV during the last scene of the premiere of Murder in a Teacup thrusts her into the limelight. Though Bill’s former MSP colleagues are quick to call Reggie’s death a heart attack, Bill suspects that one of Reggie’s many enemies may have dispatched the relentless bully with a dose of Valium. Determined to help her old friend and save her theater’s reputation, Ellie launches her own investigation. Ellie and Bill’s increasingly complex relationships to their spouses and each other command the lion’s share of interest in what looks like a series debut. The everyone-hates-the-victim setup is shopworn, the investigation is routine, and the solution leaves many of the questions raised in the first few chapters unaddressed. Learning whodunit just isn’t enough.
Lyerly’s protagonist is engaging enough to deserve a better-plotted sequel.Pub Date: July 23, 2024
ISBN: 9781639108213
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.
Lt. Eve Dallas’ 63rd futuristic case is less a whodunit than a manhunt for an unusually sympathetic killer.
Thirteen years ago, way back in 2048, scientific genius Steve Redman—father of the Banner-Wyst corporation’s Rainmaker Project—narrowly escaped death in a gas explosion that killed his pregnant wife and infant son and 200 other residents of their New York City apartment building the night before he planned to report his suspicions about the company to the FBI. Now the bill is coming due for Banner-Wyst. The first death to be discovered is that of Lawrence Chu, Redman’s colleague and trusted friend, whose tenure as director of bioengineering science ends when he’s beaten to death. For quite a while, Dallas and her partner, Det. Delia Peabody, know less about this mystery than their readers do. But when Ezra Dent, a consultant to Banner-Wyst who worked with Redman and Chu back in the day, is murdered in exactly the same ferocious way, Dallas and Peabody, with help from Roarke, Dallas’ tech-billionaire husband, promptly put the pieces together and determine who they’re looking for. The search for Redman, who went AWOL from his hospital bed without a trace six years ago, has its own challenges. So does Dallas’ attempt to get cooperation from partners Calvin Banner and Jacob Wyst, who are clearly in the crosshairs of a killer who seems a lot less monstrous than they are. If the breaks in the case are suspiciously convenient in arriving, readers can pride themselves on taking sides against a mega-corporation whose self-avowed ecological saintliness is undermined by its leaders’ underhanded dealing.
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414564
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.
It takes a quirky sleuth to solve a baffling closed-door murder.
The author himself or, more accurately, some version of him, walks the reader through a “gruesome murder” that occurred in a rural farming village. At the center of the crime is the wealthy Ichiyanagi family, including the widow Itoko and her five children. The “heinous crime” occurs in the evening after the festive wedding of eldest son Kenzo to schoolteacher Katsuko. Yokomizo, part narrator and part raconteur, liberally shares digressions such as the fact that his favorite British author is A.A. Milne, who wrote The Red House Mystery as well as the books about Winnie-the-Pooh. Written in 1946 but set in 1937 before the devastation of World War II, this is the first novel featuring Kosuke Kindaichi, the legendary detective who appeared in more than 70 stories by Yokomizo. If Yokomizo is the Japanese Agatha Christie, Kindaichi may seem the Japanese Hercule Poirot—although actually, given his unkempt hair and apparently distracted manner, he’s more a cross between Poirot and Columbo. Shrewdly, his entrance is delayed until midway through the novel, after the police have stalled and both the family and the reader are anxious for a solution. The narrator’s garrulous charm, in a mystery long on logistics and forensic clues but short on detailed character portraits or extended interactions, is a key to the novel’s success, leavening the more intricate pieces of the puzzle. Armchair detectives will welcome the helpful character list that precedes the story.
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781805336549
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
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