A gloriously eccentric cast of characters, from Flavia’s dad, whose stamp collection is bankrupting the ancestral digs, to...
Almost 11 and keen on poisons, Flavia de Luce gets a second chance to broaden her lethal knowledge.
Roused from a detailed fantasy of her own funeral by a nosy jackdaw and the sound of a woman weeping, Flavia encounters Mother Goose—or so the pretty redhead introduces herself. Actually Nialla only plays the role in Rupert Porson’s puppet show, currently bogged down with van trouble. The vicar of Bishop’s Lacey suggests a mechanic and puts the puppeteer and his assistant up with the Inglebys at Culverhouse Farm. Rupert will repay the help by staging his production of “Jack and the Beanstalk” at St. Tancred’s parish hall. Oddly, although Rupert claims never to have met the Inglebys before, his Jack puppet bears the face of their son Robin, deceased five years ago in what a 1945 inquest termed misadventure. Inspector Hewitt, whose first acquaintance with Flavia (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, 2009) solved a murder, must wait patiently once more while Flavia chats up the neighbors, breaks into the library, researches the past, washes down scones, horehound candies and cucumber sandwiches with tea, and sabotages a box of chocolates meant for one of her tormenting sisters.
A gloriously eccentric cast of characters, from Flavia’s dad, whose stamp collection is bankrupting the ancestral digs, to her sisters Ophelia and Daphne, who tell Flavia she was a foundling. There’s not a reader alive who wouldn’t want to watch Flavia in her lab concocting some nefarious brew.Pub Date: March 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-34231-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
No more meeting-cute for romancer Hoag. Here, couples bond over body bags as the author turns her deft hand to a grisly crime thriller, skillfully constructed if less than completely page- turning. In Night Sins (1995), the first of Hoag's two-part combo, hard-nosed agent Megan O'Malley came to rural Deer Lake, Minnesota, fell in love with hard-nosed police chief Mitch Holt, and together with him tracked down Garrett Wright, the evil genius who kidnapped eight-year-old Josh Kirkwood and then beat up Megan, breaking nearly every bone in her hand—at least twice. This time, hard-nosed prosecutor Ellen North, who left the Twin Cities to get away from big-city violence, wants to rescue Josh and prosecute Wright to the full extent of the law. Complicating her case, though, is, first, handsome southerner Jay Butler Brooks, a millionaire author of true-crime novels whose face has been on the cover of People and whose sexy, smoky drawl insinuates itself under Ellen's tough exterior. (Brooks himself has come to Deer Lake to escape his own personal devils and to cash in on a great story, but he'll stay to be redeemed by Ellen's courage and dedication.) The second complication is young Josh himself, who's returned but is too traumatized to testify. Third is Wright's greasy big-time defense attorney, Tony Costello, who used to be Ellen's lover before he betrayed her. Fourth, no one believes that mild-mannered Professor Wright, an acknowledged community good-guy, could have done such a terrible thing. And, finally, someone keeps littering the icy Minnesota landscape with other bodies, including one of another kidnapped boy. After a lot of gut-wrenching dedication by Ellen, Jay, Megan, and Mitch, there's a bloody if positive resolution and both couples limp off into the sunset. This time out, Hoag abandons some of her outrageous romantic style to investigate more serious moral issues. Worthy, but much less fun.
Pub Date: March 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-553-09959-0
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995
Readers will love the quirky characters in this clever yarn. Pendergast and Coldmoon make an excellent pair.
The 18th installment in the Pendergast series by Preston and Child (City of Endless Night, 2018, etc.) gives the hero a partner in the hunt for a strange killer.
A woman walks a dog in a Miami Beach cemetery, and her dog finds a human heart. Soon more hearts turn up at the gravesites of women thought to have committed suicide a decade before. The FBI assigns agents Pendergast and Coldmoon to work with the Miami PD on the case. Pendergast is highly successful in closing cases on his own but “was about as rogue as they came,” and suspects tend not to survive his investigations. Agent Coldmoon’s secret assignment is to keep a close eye on his partner, “a bomb waiting to go off,” who tends to do something “out of left field, or of questionable ethics, or even specifically against orders.” The current victims are women whose throats have been slit and breastbones split open to remove their hearts, all in quick and expert fashion. The killer leaves notes at the graves, signed “Mister Brokenhearts.” This kind of weirdness is in Pendergast’s wheelhouse, as he’s an odd sort himself, quite outside the FBI culture. Rather like Sherlock Holmes, he sees patterns that others miss. He’s tall, gaunt, dresses like an undertaker, and always seems to have more money than the average FBI agent. Both men are great characters—Coldmoon curses in Lakota and prefers “tarry black” coffee that Pendergast likens to “poison sumac” and “battery acid.” They wonder about the earlier deaths and whether the women had really hanged themselves. For answers they require exhumations, new autopsies, and a medical examiner’s close examinations of the hyoid bones. Meanwhile the deeply troubled killer ponders his next action, which he hopes will one day wipe away his pain and guilt and bring atonement. Alligators, bullets, and a sinkhole contribute to a nerve-wracking finish.
Readers will love the quirky characters in this clever yarn. Pendergast and Coldmoon make an excellent pair.Pub Date: Dec. 31, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5387-4720-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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