This captivating blend of angst, mystery, and page-turning suspense delivers a top-notch reading experience.
In a desperate attempt to salvage her life, former LAPD homicide detective Alyson “Sonny” Rush accepts an offer from Ivan Poole, her godfather, to join him as a private investigator in the charming Northern California town of Haven.
When they move to Haven, Sonny and her mother, Val, who has early-onset dementia, become part of a small group of Black families in town. Sonny's first case involves Figgy, a stolen goldendoodle belonging to London and Mackenzie Sutton, who turn out to be the wife and daughter of Sonny’s wealthy lover, Cooper Sutton, who'd told her he was divorced. It turns out he was lying, and Sonny is embarrassed and angry to find out that she "would already have an ex-boyfriend in Haven." Although Ivan's sure that Mackenzie stole Figgy herself, desperate for some attention from her parents, Sonny is determined to find the dog—but she’s more sharply focused on Ivan’s investigation into the death of a Black teenager that the local police have dismissed as suicide. Xander Monroe was an “A” student in high school and a star running back recruited by several colleges. His parents relocated to Haven to protect him from the negative influences of Los Angeles. The inadequate police investigation into his death prompts Sonny to do her own, leading her to receive threatening messages and poisoned cupcakes. Cooper, a real estate developer, wants to market Haven as a safe haven for new investors, but his ambitious plans face opposition from local business owners unwilling to meet his financial demands. Sonny must use information from the incriminating files Ivan has collected on the seemingly perfect citizens of Haven if she’s to solve her cases, maintain her sanity, and ensure her survival.
This captivating blend of angst, mystery, and page-turning suspense delivers a top-notch reading experience.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9781662522840
Page Count: 395
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
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
Fans will relish every high-energy moment without demanding rational explanations for every detail.
A retired hit man’s wish to impress his new love leads him back into a thicket of crime and corruption.
During the dinner date they’re finally going out on, Chicago area therapist Gwendolyn Lord shares with English professor Cameron Winter a story she’s just heard from forensic psychologist Livy Swain, an old school friend, of an impossible crime. Owen McKay, arrested six months ago for killing his wife and son and crying, “It’s still there! Still there!,” was shot to death with a nail gun inside his closely watched prison cell. Though his initial reaction is idle curiosity, Winter resolves to show off his prowess to Gwendolyn by solving the mystery. Dr. Billy Whitefield, the pathologist who conducted the postmortem on McKay, shares with Winter a monstrous revelation that he’s been blackmailed into concealing: He removed a spidery attachment from McKay’s brain whose existence was deleted from the official report. After a friend at his college links the implant to Thaumatix—a company whose motto is “We’re in the business of miracles”—Winter learns of another case that sounds eerily similar: the kidnapping, rape, and murder of a Connecticut high school student by a previously inoffensive carpenter who’s killed before Winter can question him. Surrounded by assassins and amoral corporate overlords, Winter leans more and more into his relationship with Gwendolyn, though the person he most wants to talk to is the Recruiter, the nameless boss he trusted to make life-or-death decisions when he worked as a contract killer. Miraculously, the Recruiter, who’s vanished, returns to Winter’s life. But what if he can’t be trusted any more than everyone else?
Fans will relish every high-energy moment without demanding rational explanations for every detail.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781613166864
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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