A laudable whodunit featuring a sleuthing couple with series potential.
In Breen’s murder mystery, one of the critics selected for a wine-tasting event turns up dead.
Wisconsin wine critic Ambrose Hauser, who is working on his latest book, has invited fellow critics to taste and rate wines over the course of several days. Cy and Liz Bartholomew arrive for the event and check into a B&B. Liz—a former librarian and a part-time sommelier just getting started in this industry—is also legally blind, and needs her semi-retired locksmith husband, Cy, to help judge the wines’ colors. (It’s all fairly dull for Cy, who isn’t allowed to taste or even smell any of the wine.) Everyone is shocked when, during a boat outing and evening swim, one critic suddenly disappears. The police later recover the body and confirm the death is a homicide (“Someone slit her throat with a knife”). As the wine tasting continues, it becomes apparent that someone involved in the event is a killer. Cy and Liz sniff around and put together a hefty list of suspects with motives and/or opportunities to commit the crime. Breen organically integrates his amateur sleuths into the investigation—Cy is friends with a detective, and the cops request his skills to open locks. The dual leads are multilayered—Liz can function just fine with her disability, especially in daylight; Cy, an erstwhile longtime partner at a private security company, checks their B&B room for cameras and listening devices mostly out of habit. They join a wonderful array of supporting characters, from the noticeably anxious Missy LeBrun to the uninhibited Carpenter Dalbesio, who spends much of her time filming for social media. Cy, who narrates, doesn’t dwell too long on the wine tastings as he and Liz mull over who among them is a murderer. The mystery is refreshingly simple yet convincing, granted verisimilitude by Cy’s meticulous and hyper-observant examinations of the crime scene(s).
A laudable whodunit featuring a sleuthing couple with series potential.Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9798999661210
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Dutch Hollow Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A chorus of encouraging voices that mix do-this instruction with companionable inspiration.
Everything you wanted to know about how to plan, draft, write, revise, publish, and market a mystery, courtesy of the cheerleaders from the Mystery Writers of America.
In a marketplace crowded with how-to-write titles, the big selling point of this one is the variety of voices behind more than 30 full-length chapters covering everything from mystery subgenres (Neil Nyren) to publishing law (Daniel Stevens), punctuated with a variety of shorter interpolations. A few of them are more pointed than the longer chapters—e.g., when Rob Hart advises, “Allow yourself the space to forget things,” Tim Maleeny says, “Love your characters, but treat them like dirt,” or C.M. Surrisi notes, “If you’re writing a mystery for kids, remember that your protagonist can’t drive and has a curfew, and no one will believe them or let them be involved.” The contributors vary in their approaches, from businesslike (Dale W. Berry and Gary Phillips on the process of creating graphic novels, Liliana Hart on self-publishing, Maddee James on cultivating an online presence) to personal (Frankie Y. Bailey on creating diverse characters, Chris Grabenstein on writing for middle schoolers, Catriona McPherson on deploying humor) to autobiographical (Rachel Howzell Hall on creating a Black female detective, Louise Penny on building a community of followers) to frankly self-promoting (T. Jefferson Parker on creating villains, Max Allan Collins on continuing someone else’s franchise). Although many familiar bromides are recycled—“All stories are character-driven,” writes Allison Brennan, and Jacqueline Winspear, Gayle Lynds, and Daniel Stashower all urge the paramount importance of research—the most entertaining moments are the inevitable disagreements that crop up, especially between Jeffery Deaver (“Always Outline!”) and editor Child (“Never Outline!”), with Deaver getting the better of the argument. Other contributors include Alex Segura, William Kent Krueger, Tess Gerritsen, and Hallie Ephron.
A chorus of encouraging voices that mix do-this instruction with companionable inspiration.Pub Date: April 27, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982149-43-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
An entertaining ramble through a golden age of violin-playing and violin-faking.
A rollicking historical study that tackles the murky careers of antique violins and the raucous culture of 19th-century virtuosos.
Gaul, a violinist and trustee of the National Music Museum in South Dakota, explores the provenance of two 18th-century Cremonese instruments: the “Messiah” Stradivarius, owned by Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum; and a violin made by luthier Giuseppi Guarneri, now displayed in Genoa’s town hall. The latter was once owned by legendary virtuoso Niccoló Paganini, who dubbed it Il Cannone for its powerful sound. Both violins are of questionable authenticity because of their passage through the workshop of Parisian luthier and violin dealer Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, who was known for making near-perfect copies of Cremonese originals. Vuillaume did repairs on Il Cannone for Paganini in 1833, bought the Messiah himself in 1855, and copied both. Gaul investigates the possibility that a copy was passed off as the original and even exceeded it in quality. The author also dives deeply into old-school violin-making details, from the design of bows to specific techniques to make brand-new violins look very old. Along the way, he steeps readers in the antics of superstar romantic violinists, especially the larger-than-life Paganini; he spotlights the maestro’s astonishing performances, his tempestuous love affairs, his disturbing syphilis symptoms, and his devilish reputation. The book is a meandering jaunt, full of far-flung digressions on such topics as Napoleon Bonaparte’s mistress and the era’s anxiety that female piano players attracted immoral men; these sometimes lose the thread of the overarching mystery but are wonderfully intriguing in their own rights. Gaul relates all of this in elegant, evocative prose: “When it is ill—when it is being pried open with a knife—it makes sickening cracking sounds as its bones are separated,” he writes of Vuillaume’s disassembly of Il Cannone. “Paganini was exquisitely sensitive to sound, and it was a torment to hear his own violin put under the knife.” Lovers of classical music and forensic detective stories will eat it up.
An entertaining ramble through a golden age of violin-playing and violin-faking.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-03-910819-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
© 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.
