Perceptive storytelling energized by an admirable protagonist and refined prose.
In the first of the Manny Rivera Mystery series, a collection of rare, valuable Native American pottery leads to deceit and murder.
Deputy Sheriff Manny Rivera is assigned to the case of a ranch hand found with a bullet hole in his head. The deputy, desperate to make up for a previously botched stakeout gig, tracks clues and hopes to solve the murder before the profitable tourist season in Moab, Utah, takes a hit. The killer, meanwhile, is trying to sell Native American artifacts that are apparently worth shooting someone for. He obtained the pottery illegally, on a ranch run by a man who, unbeknownst to Manny, found the body first and moved it to protect a secret. Curtin’s debut novel is easily labeled a murder mystery, but it’s more about the investigation than the whodunit, especially since the killer’s identity and motive are never a mystery. The real question is why Paul, the ranch foreman, drove the body far away from the ranch, a mystery that the author smartly keeps concealed until the end. Manny’s investigation consists mostly of interviews, but following along with the deputy is utterly absorbing and gratifying since he’s essentially the underdog; his intentions are to make amends for his last case and make an impression on the sheriff. Such drive makes Manny refreshingly modest; he’s more critical of his mistakes than anyone else. The same likable qualities are, surprisingly, also shown in Frank, the man who kills the ranch hand. His discharge from the Army is followed by a succession of tedious jobs, and he’s treated poorly by his current employer. A sympathetic person, he’s a man whose greed is a character flaw, not a defining trait, and he clearly feels regret over the murder. Curtin’s descriptions of arid Moab are poetic: a mesa “sliced by a labyrinth of rugged canyons,” the “exquisite silence” of the high desert country and the “plumes of dust” Frank sees as he spots his buyer from afar. Unfortunately, one mystery—the genuine identity of the murdered man—isn’t answered, although perhaps that’s for another Manny Rivera tale.
Perceptive storytelling energized by an admirable protagonist and refined prose.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2011
ISBN: 978-1453890851
Page Count: 302
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Enough clues, red herrings, and false endings to make readers feel that the Orient Express has put out to sea.
A luxury liner bound for New York in 1924 becomes the scene of a twisty golden age pastiche.
When an unnamed third-class passenger discovers the body of an elderly man at the bottom of an exterior flight of stairs aboard the Endeavour, Capt. McCrory insists it must be an accident. But James Temple, a Scotland Yard detective who just happens to be aboard, says that no one would have ventured to the outdoor steps in the rain without a coat, so the death should be treated as suspicious. Unable to stop Temple from investigating, McCrory assigns ship’s officer Timothy Birch to accompany him, and Birch promptly becomes the world’s most unwilling Dr. Watson, constantly battling Temple over theories and procedures. Anxious that they have only four days to find a potential killer before the ship docks and lets its 2,000 passengers roam free in New York, he’s especially infuriated at the leisurely pace marked by Temple’s bromide, “Facts before witnesses.” There’s reason to sympathize with Temple, because the suspects in first and second class (the only classes that matter in this ultra-class-conscious world) are cardboard cutouts—the successful banker, his trophy wife, the aspiring artists, the gallery owner—who are much less interesting than the secrets they’re hiding. In his most anachronistic development, author Hindle shows Birch, unlike the imperturbable sidekicks he echoes, sunk in grief over his vanished daughter, Amelia, and his estranged wife, Kate, who left him after Amelia disappeared during one of his ocean voyages. He’d do anything to get his daughter back, he tells Temple, and his determination leads to the biggest surprise of all.
Enough clues, red herrings, and false endings to make readers feel that the Orient Express has put out to sea.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9798217185740
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
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
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