Although she seems for quite a while to be relying on good contacts and good luck, Bradley's preteen heroine comes through...
Banished from Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy in far-off Toronto (As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust, 2015, etc.) and sent back home to England, Flavia de Luce wants nothing more than to hug her beloved father. Fate has other plans.
No sooner has unapologetically precocious Flavia arrived back in Buckshaw, the home her late mother left her, than she’s informed in hushed tones that the impecunious Col. Haviland de Luce is in hospital with pneumonia. Before she can tear herself away from Ophelia and Daphne, the hateful older sisters she’s dubbed Feely and Daffy, and her recently discovered cousin Undine to go visit him and spread her distinctive brand of cyanide cheer, a routine errand she agrees to run for Cynthia Richardson, the vicar’s wife, brings her face to knees with woodworker Roger Sambridge, who’s been crucified upside down on the bedroom door of his cottage. Instead of screaming and fleeing like any other 12-year-old, Flavia naturally investigates. The most interesting discovery she makes is a set of Oliver Inchbold’s children’s books, which would seem far from the obvious reading material for an unmarried 70-year-old man. Her quest to ascertain what they were doing in Sambridge’s library leads Flavia to a series of increasingly revealing conversations with Carla Sherrinford-Cameron, whose signature was in one of the books; to rumors that both Carla’s late aunt, Louisa Congreve, and Sambridge neighbor Lillian Trench are witches; and to a past crime that’s been cunningly concealed from Flavia’s pal Inspector Hewitt—everywhere, in short, but to her father’s bedside.
Although she seems for quite a while to be relying on good contacts and good luck, Bradley's preteen heroine comes through in the end with a series of deductions so clever she wants to hug herself. So will you.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-345-53996-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A treat for aficionados of shopkeeper-sleuth cozies.
Notch another corpse for Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree (Death by Chocolate Malted Milkshake, 2019, etc.).
After slowly working its way out of the red, Jake’s sweet shop is now one of the linchpins of the revitalized business district of Eastport, Maine. But she and her partner, Ellie White, are less than thrilled when Henry Hadlyme, star of the food tourism show Eat This! offers to include The Chocolate Moose on his podcast Eating on the Edge! which highlights off-the-beaten-track purveyors of New England fare. Hadlyme seems a little slimy to Jake and Ellie, and his interest in their treats seems less than sincere. But when he calls Jake “missy,” that’s it; the two chocolateers boot him out of their shop. He comes back with a vengeance—or at least, his corpse does. It turns up in the basement of the Moose with a stuffed parrot pinned to its shoulder and a cutlass jabbed through its chest in a gruesome nod to the ongoing Eastport Pirate Festival. Jake would love to present police chief Bob Arnold with a convenient alternative to charging her with Hadlyme’s murder. And there’s no dearth of suspects: A surreptitious trip to the Eat This! production trailer lets Jake know that pretty much everyone involved with the show hated Hadlyme. But finding out exactly who croaked the curmudgeon—and offering the chief some proof—proves to be a challenge to Jake’s and Ellie’s ingenuity, health, and welfare.
A treat for aficionados of shopkeeper-sleuth cozies.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1134-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It's clearly Cat’s meow, and if you respond positively to her tempestuous carryings-on, then you'll probably forgive Iles...
A serial killer who puts the bite on victims is the villainous center of a long, long psychothriller, as southern Gothic as it gets.
Dr. Catherine (Cat) Ferry is a forensic odontologist, which is to say “an expert on human teeth and the damage they can do.” In four cases enlivening the New Orleans crime scene, however, the damage done is mostly posthumous, the victims having been snuffed first, gnawed on afterward. Cat loves being called in to help NOPD investigations. She also loves a hunky homicide detective named Sean Regan. At some point, Sean says, he will leave his wife and kids for her, but it’s a point of diminishing probability. Hard to really blame Sean, feckless as he is, since Cat’s not only bipolar, alcoholic and promiscuous but also apparently content to remain that way. And then, leaning over the chewed-upon corpse of Arthur LeGendre, she has a panic attack that amounts to an epiphany. Something’s wrong, she intuits, and makes a beeline for home in Natchez, Miss. Somehow, she has sensed a connection between the New Orleans murders and dark doings in her own past. Twenty years ago, when Cat was eight, her daddy was shot to death. A mysterious assailant, grandpapa Kirkland has insisted through the years, but Cat has always found that difficult to accept. Now, in her old bedroom in the family manse, she unexpectedly discovers forensic evidence that supports her skepticism—and discovers as well gleanings of a terrible secret. In the meantime, back in New Orleans, the investigation has heated up, and here too it seems Cat had it right. Murder in New Orleans and murder in Natchez are connected by the same kind of terrible secret.
It's clearly Cat’s meow, and if you respond positively to her tempestuous carryings-on, then you'll probably forgive Iles (The Footprints of God, 2003, etc.) his unabashed quest for bestsellerdom.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-3470-7
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2005
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