A well-paced and well-plotted mystery-series entry.
Stander returns with his 11th novel featuring respected Michigan sheriff Ray Elkins, who investigates a beachside mystery while recovering from a recent trauma.
Ray, the sheriff of Cedar County, is back home after a lengthy hospital stay for a gunshot wound. Detective Sgt. Sue Lawrence has been keeping an eye on things in his absence, but he’s anxious to get back in the game, if only to distract himself from his memories of the altercation that caused his injury and the fact that his personal life is in flux. Fortunately for him, there’s plenty going on in Cedar County, especially on the massive private estate at Gull Point. Its owner, art-world bigwig Alice Ingersolle, is hosting a Memorial Day wedding for her daughter, just a few weeks after a severed human foot washes up on the property’s beach: “Small shoe,” as Sue calmly describes it. “Men’s size eight….Let’s get it into the cooler.” Meanwhile, unbeknown to anyone, the bride is carrying on an affair with Gull Point’s property manager,Scott Nelson,who, in turn, is sleeping with wedding planner Jennifer Bidwell;he also recently cooked Sue a romantic dinner of spaghetti carbonara. The bride receives a special gift from her grandfather, painter Gerhard Talmadge, before the wedding: a collection of priceless sketchesthat may have been stolen from Alice’s gallery during World War II. Then, on the day of the nuptials, a powerful storm hits Gull Point, which results in injuries to many of the guests. During the chaos, Gerhard is found dead in the woods. It’s a case that will provide Ray with a much-needed challenge.
Over the course of the novel, Stander employs prose that’s vivid and sharp, as when Jennifer realizes that a tornado has landed in the midst of the reception: “She could see that the people around her were screaming, too, but the sound of their voices was lost in the maelstrom. And then the protective canopy of canvas vaulted upward and away, flying through the air and crashing to the ground.” Equally impressive is the way in which the author unveils important bits of information by slipping, unexpectedly, into different characters’ third-person points of view. The book does take its time to get started, but there’s a reason for the slow accumulation of personalities and odd happenings, as it gives the author plenty of useful material for the murder investigation, once it begins. Ray and Sue, as character types, are fairly standard for the genre: a grizzled lawman and his younger female partner, each harboring an unspoken desire for the other. However, the author intriguingly delves into the psychologies of the various wedding attendees, whose messy lives and conniving ways add darkness and scandal to the plot. Fans of previous series entries will surely enjoy this installment’s classic, mansion-set storyline, but it will also satisfy newcomers to the Ray Elkins universe, as the tangled family history of the Ingersolles does put his and Sue’s skills to the test.
A well-paced and well-plotted mystery-series entry.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9975701-6-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Writers & Editors, LLC
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.
Lt. Eve Dallas’ 63rd futuristic case is less a whodunit than a manhunt for an unusually sympathetic killer.
Thirteen years ago, way back in 2048, scientific genius Steve Redman—father of the Banner-Wyst corporation’s Rainmaker Project—narrowly escaped death in a gas explosion that killed his pregnant wife and infant son and 200 other residents of their New York City apartment building the night before he planned to report his suspicions about the company to the FBI. Now the bill is coming due for Banner-Wyst. The first death to be discovered is that of Lawrence Chu, Redman’s colleague and trusted friend, whose tenure as director of bioengineering science ends when he’s beaten to death. For quite a while, Dallas and her partner, Det. Delia Peabody, know less about this mystery than their readers do. But when Ezra Dent, a consultant to Banner-Wyst who worked with Redman and Chu back in the day, is murdered in exactly the same ferocious way, Dallas and Peabody, with help from Roarke, Dallas’ tech-billionaire husband, promptly put the pieces together and determine who they’re looking for. The search for Redman, who went AWOL from his hospital bed without a trace six years ago, has its own challenges. So does Dallas’ attempt to get cooperation from partners Calvin Banner and Jacob Wyst, who are clearly in the crosshairs of a killer who seems a lot less monstrous than they are. If the breaks in the case are suspiciously convenient in arriving, readers can pride themselves on taking sides against a mega-corporation whose self-avowed ecological saintliness is undermined by its leaders’ underhanded dealing.
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414564
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.
It takes a quirky sleuth to solve a baffling closed-door murder.
The author himself or, more accurately, some version of him, walks the reader through a “gruesome murder” that occurred in a rural farming village. At the center of the crime is the wealthy Ichiyanagi family, including the widow Itoko and her five children. The “heinous crime” occurs in the evening after the festive wedding of eldest son Kenzo to schoolteacher Katsuko. Yokomizo, part narrator and part raconteur, liberally shares digressions such as the fact that his favorite British author is A.A. Milne, who wrote The Red House Mystery as well as the books about Winnie-the-Pooh. Written in 1946 but set in 1937 before the devastation of World War II, this is the first novel featuring Kosuke Kindaichi, the legendary detective who appeared in more than 70 stories by Yokomizo. If Yokomizo is the Japanese Agatha Christie, Kindaichi may seem the Japanese Hercule Poirot—although actually, given his unkempt hair and apparently distracted manner, he’s more a cross between Poirot and Columbo. Shrewdly, his entrance is delayed until midway through the novel, after the police have stalled and both the family and the reader are anxious for a solution. The narrator’s garrulous charm, in a mystery long on logistics and forensic clues but short on detailed character portraits or extended interactions, is a key to the novel’s success, leavening the more intricate pieces of the puzzle. Armchair detectives will welcome the helpful character list that precedes the story.
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781805336549
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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