THE SWEDISH GIRL

Name: THE SWEDISH GIRL
Author: Alex Gray
ISBN: 978-0-06-265925-5

by Alex Gray ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 9, 2018

The 10th in Gray’s popular Glasgow series (A Pound of Flesh, 2012, etc.) is sure to please fans as it continues to delve...

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Four university students are thrilled to be sharing a luxury flat until their fifth roommate is murdered.

Stunning Eva Magnusson’s wealthy father doesn’t let grass grow under his feet. First he buys her a posh flat in Glasgow when she moves there from Sweden to do a course at the university; then he personally vets her flatmates: policeman’s daughter Kirsty Wilson, a nurturing young woman who loves to cook; quiet, young Colin Young, a budding writer; hefty Roger Dunbar, a useful sort to have around; and Gary Calderwood, an Englishman closest to Eva in social class. When Kirsty finds Eva beaten and strangled, all her flatmates are forced to dig deep into their hidden thoughts about her. The police find that Eva had sex shortly before her death, and when DNA proves it was with Colin, DI Jo Grant arrests him for murder. Certain that he’s innocent, Kirsty goes to her father’s boss, Detective Superintendent Lorimer, to ask for his help. But he can’t get Colin out of prison and only angers Grant when he asks her to dig deeper. The beating and strangling of several other pretty young blondes opens the possibility that Colin’s innocent. When Lorimer encourages Kristy to search Eva’s room and ask questions about her life, she’s shocked to learn that Eva has had sex with all her male flatmates plus any number of other men. Lorimer also enlists his friend professor Solomon Brightman, a psychologist and criminal profiler who’s helped him with other cases. Brightman interviews Colin and does think him innocent but also thinks that whoever is killing the other young women did not kill Eva. So Kirsty’s left to continue her amateur sleuthing while the professionals hunt down every clue in hopes of finding a killer or two.

The 10th in Gray’s popular Glasgow series (A Pound of Flesh, 2012, etc.) is sure to please fans as it continues to delve into the lives of the cops who solve the tricky mysteries he sets them.

Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-06-265925-5

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Witness Impulse

Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017

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RANDOM ROAD

by Thomas Kies ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 2, 2017

Though the heroine’s love life may be less interesting to mystery fans than her amateur sleuthing, Kies’ fiction debut lays...

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A hard-living newspaperwoman juggles multiple men and battles the bottle on her way to redemption via a high-profile murder story.

Punching a cop lands Sheffield Post reporter Geneva Chase on probation, with mandatory attendance at AA meetings as a chaser. But a grisly multiple murder at wealthy George and Lynette Chadwick’s home on the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound might be Genie’s ticket to redemption. The Chadwick homicides aren’t the only high-profile crime stories on her radar. She’s also following the case of Jimmy Fitzgerald, a spoiled rich kid recently arrested for murder and, in the view of Genie’s tart first-person narrative, a sociopath. Meantime, an unexpected upsurge in her love life challenges her resolve to keep her sobriety and her eye on the journalistic ball. When she runs into childhood pal Kevin Bell at an AA meeting, she finds herself drawn to his adorable awkwardness. And out of the blue, her hot ex Frank Mancini calls, wanting to rekindle a romance she’d thought was dead. As she ricochets from Frank to Kevin, Genie also toils in the trenches on various stories. She gets injured by a burglar in a HumVee while tracking a series of local robberies and gingerly explores the discreet local S&M scene’s ties to those murders. Her research on this big crime includes the history of the house and the lives of the victims.

Though the heroine’s love life may be less interesting to mystery fans than her amateur sleuthing, Kies’ fiction debut lays the groundwork for an entertaining series.

Pub Date: May 2, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-4642-0800-3

Page Count: 318

Publisher: Poisoned Pen

Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017

Categories:

MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | DETECTIVES & PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS

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WINTERKILL

by C.J. Box ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 12, 2003

The loose ends that make this the least satisfactory of Joe’s three cases to date still don’t inhibit Box’s gift for nonstop...

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The latest in an award-winning series set in the Bighorn Mountains (Savage Run, 2002, etc.).

Minutes after Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett arrests Lamar Gardiner, District Supervisor for the Twelve Sleep National Forest, for firing into a herd of elk, killing seven animals and blindly continuing to reload with cigarettes after he runs out of shells, Gardiner manages to handcuff Joe to his steering wheel and bolt off into a winter storm, only to turn up pinned to a tree with a pair of arrows, his throat cut. And things get even messier from that point on. The attack on a federal agent, together with reports that the Nation of the Rocky Mountain Sovereign Citizens has established an encampment in Twelve Sleep, brings gung-ho US Forest Service investigator Melinda Strickland and FBI sharpshooter Dick Munker, a veteran of Waco and Ruby Ridge, to town. Strickland maintains that she’s just trying to get justice for a murdered official, but she seems awfully eager to tie the perp to the Sovereigns. By the time Joe arrests one of Gardiner’s disappointing killers and identifies the other, Strickland and Munker are already planning an all-out attack on the encampment. The prospect is a personal nightmare for Joe, since Jeannie Keeley, the drifter whose abandoned daughter April Joe and his wife have been trying to adopt, has reclaimed April and spirited her off to the dubious shelter of the Sovereigns.

The loose ends that make this the least satisfactory of Joe’s three cases to date still don’t inhibit Box’s gift for nonstop action and his ability to see every side of the most divisive issues in the West.