A fine whodunit full of satisfying twists, featuring a well-developed protagonist.
In Goldsmith’s mystery series starter,a troubled detective takes on the greatest investigation of his life.
The story begins on December 23 in the present day, as Mike Vogel, a lieutenant with the NYPD, is assigned to a big case. An attack’s taken place in The Spire, one of the tallest and most secure buildings in New York City. There, in the wealthy Grubb family’s penthouse, lie the dead bodies of Richard Grubb, a successful land developer; Val Grubb, his wife; Sabine LaCroix, who comes from a family of weapons manufacturers; and theirlawyer, Martin G. Katz. All four are connected to the infamous financier Andrew Levine, the late pedophile who was known for getting the privileged elite what they want. As the cops continue to sweep the penthouse, they locate a panic room, where Vogel finds and questions Derek Fawcett, the private security detail hired by author Olivia Hawthorne, who lives in the apartment below. Hawthorne penned Hero Cop, a book that accused Vogel of murdering his own wife, costing him his reputation and custody of his son. This turn of events triggers a flashback to September 11, 2001, when Vogel’s spouse went missing. The narrative also introduces a group named Talon, made up of ex-members of the Army, Navy, CIA, and FBI. During their own investigation, they aim to find videos that Levine made, complicating Vogel’s efforts. Goldsmith’s book contains some intriguing plot turns and some nice banter, especially in one of the last scenes between Vogel and Hawthorne, whose relationship goes through some significant changes. Throughout the story, the author takes time to focus on what Vogel is thinking and feeling, effectively immersing readers in the character’s mindset: “167 minutes. That’s the number of minutes Mike slept the previous night. Not surprising, all things considered. That said, he never slept much….Part of the job. The one advantage—the privilege of watching the sun rise.” The pacing, while initially stagnant, picks up quickly as the investigation reaches its climax.
A fine whodunit full of satisfying twists, featuring a well-developed protagonist.Pub Date: March 4, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 369
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.
When two women who share a birthday meet, a journalist becomes the subject of her own true-crime mystery.
On their 45th birthdays, Josie Fair and Alix Summer meet at a pub and discover they were born not only on the same day, but in the same hospital. Alix is a successful journalist, and Josie convinces Alix that her story is worth telling: Josie met her husband when she was 13 and he was 40. “I can see that maybe I was being used, that maybe I was even being groomed?” she confesses to Alix. “But that feeling of being powerful, right at the start, when I was still in control. I miss that sometimes. I really do. And what I’d like, more than anything, is to get it back.” From this premise Alix creates a Netflix series, Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin! which investigates Josie’s life as she reconciles what happened to her as a teen and seeks a new path. With the story unfinished, the narrative unfolds in the present tense, with prose that jingles like song lyrics: “He turns to see if the girl is behind him, and sees her wishy-washy, wavy-wavy, in double vision through the glass windows of the hotel.” Alix is both intrigued and repulsed by Josie, but she initially gives her the benefit of the doubt. After all, Alix’s husband, Nathan, has a drinking problem, and Alix knows what it’s like to be reluctant to leave a bad situation. But Josie seems more interested in being part of Alix’s seemingly glamorous life than she is in fixing her own, and when three people end up dead and Alix’s life is turned upside down, the evidence points to Josie—and turns the TV series into a murder mystery. Transcripts from Alix’s interviews alternate with the narrative, offering increasingly varied perspectives on Josie’s story as told by her neighbors, friends, and family members. With so many versions of events, the ending shatters, leaving readers to decide whose is the truth.
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781982179007
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
