A wholesome, entertaining mystery anchored by a PI with plenty of personality.
A seasoned detective finds herself in the middle of a local murder case in Boyer’s mystery.
Boyer, the author of the Liz Talbot mysteries, launches a new stand-alone series with this novel featuring likable Southern private investigator Hadley Cooper. The story starts out warmly as she reunites with lifelong friends Gavin Kinloch, a local cop; Joe Vincent, a retired investigator; and Gavin’s military macaw to celebrate her 40th birthday early in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, with a vegan meal in her honor. On Hadley’s actual birthday, she bikes over to the shore of Sullivan’s Island to watch the sunrise and admire her “fantasy” oceanfront home; she ends up rescuing the runaway bichon frisé of nearby resident and heiress Eugenia Ladson. The two women become fast friends, and soon Hadley is attending the chatty happy hour gatherings of Eugenia and her pals. Eugenia suspects that her husband, Everette, is unfaithful, and she craves “incontrovertible evidence” to use against him in a divorce proceeding. Then Eugenia is found stabbed to death, and Everette is the prime suspect. However, Hadley knows that he was out of town at the time of the murder. Meanwhile, she housesits for the lavish beach house while attempting to free local restaurant hostess Kateryna from a murder rap. Also investigating is her ex-boyfriend—Charleston police detective Cash Reynolds—and there’s plenty of unfinished romantic business between the two. Over the course of this book, Lowcountry-based readers will revel in the author’s vivid descriptions of the local cuisine (“fried chicken, country ham biscuits, chicken bog, shrimp and grits, macaroni salad, potato salad, corn salad, pimento cheese, and on and on”), the friendly populace, and the sun-drenched atmosphere of Charleston and Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina. She also effectively establishes Hadley as a good person and keen investigator with a complex backstory. Boyer’s fans and new readers will find much to enjoy as Hadley and her eclectic group of boisterous new friends sleuth their way to this mystery’s conclusion.
A wholesome, entertaining mystery anchored by a PI with plenty of personality.Pub Date: April 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781959023159
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Stella Maris Books, LLC
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
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
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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