A welcome series kickoff from a seasoned veteran.
Is an ex-con ex-cop being framed for murder a second time?
Mark’s gritty crime yarn unfolds at first in splintered pieces, lurching slowly forward in time, beginning with the morning in 1995 when Cumbrian Police Constable Wulfric Hagman wakes up in a drunken stupor, calling for his wife, Trina. His subsequent discovery of Trina’s savaged corpse is followed in short order by his arrest for her murder. The transcript of a juicy radio broadcast from the following year fills in the details of the case and describes Wulf’s conviction and lengthy prison sentence. A rambling 2001 letter from Trina’s eldest daughter, young adult Salome Delaney, presents a more sympathetic view of Wulf, who strove to block Trina’s abusiveness and act as a responsible stepfather to Sal and her several siblings. Praise is also showered on Wulf’s solicitor, Dagmara Scrowther, who fought for him and became a surrogate mother to the abandoned Delaney brood. Much more recently, an unidentified man is tortured and killed, and the killer’s final words implicate Wulf, who’s now out of prison. Unfortunately for Wulf, this victim turns out to be Barry Ford, the man Trina left him for decades ago. The story ultimately settles on Sal, now a police officer, her equally scarred brother Jarod, and their efforts to exonerate their stepfather. The first installment in a new series from the prolific author of the DS Aector McAvoy novels is masterfully plotted, teasing armchair detectives with pieces of the full murder puzzle.
A welcome series kickoff from a seasoned veteran.Pub Date: June 4, 2024
ISBN: 9781448311996
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
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
Smart, edgy, and entertaining as heck.
Against her better judgment, Lucy Chase returns to her hometown of Plumpton, Texas, for her grandmother’s birthday, knowing full well that almost everyone in town still believes she murdered her best friend five years ago, when they were in their early 20s.
Coincidentally—or is it?—Ben Owens, a true-crime podcaster, is also in town, interviewing Lucy’s family and former friends about the murder of Savannah Harper, “just the sweetest girl you ever met,” who died from several violent blows to the head. Lucy was found hours later covered in blood, with no memory of what happened. She was—and is—a woman with secrets, which has not endeared her to the people of Plumpton; their narrative is that she was always violent, secretive, difficult. But Ben wants to tell Lucy’s story; attractive and relentless, he uncovers new evidence and coaxes new interviews, and people slowly begin to question whether Lucy is truly guilty. Lucy, meanwhile, lets down her guard, and as she and Ben draw closer together, she has to finally face the truth of her past and unmask the murderer of her complicated, gorgeous, protective friend. Most of the novel is told from Lucy’s point of view, which allows for a natural unspooling of the layers of her life and her story. She’s strong, she’s prickly, and we gradually begin to understand just how wronged she has been. The story is a striking commentary on the insular and harmful nature of small-town prejudice and how women who don’t fit a certain mold are often considered outliers, if not straight-up villains. Tintera is smart to capitalize on how the true-crime podcast boom informs and infuses the current fictional thriller scene; she’s also effective at writing action that transcends the podcast structure.
Smart, edgy, and entertaining as heck.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781250880314
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
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