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DEATH BY ARTS AND CRAFTS

A complex mystery replete with characters worth caring about.

No good deed goes unpunished when a ladies’ getaway morphs into a murder hunt.

Together with Dayna Fisk and Bridey Kyser, two of her friends, Snowberry Creek Town Council member Abby McCree uses her assignment to assist with the town's first arts and crafts fair to check out some other nearby fairs. The women do some early Christmas shopping and meet vendors who will be coming to the Snowberry fair. At the last stop on the tour, Abby goes to check out a psychic named Madam G and gets a disturbing reading. One of the star attractions at that fair is metalworker Josiah Garth, whose niece, Jenny, talks to Abby while trying to ignore a nasty argument between Josiah and an unknown man. Meanwhile, Dayna, a potter, needs to have a talk with Wendy, her business partner. They take turns hosting their booth at fairs, and Dayna’s wares rarely sell when Wendy is in charge. When she gets back home, Abby is delighted to see her dog, Zeke, who was watched by Tripp Blackston, her tenant and burgeoning love interest. Before the Snowberry fair even opens, Tripp’s pal Gage Logan, the chief of police, and homicide detective Ben Earle, both of whom Abby knows from past cases, turn up to ask why her business cards were found at a crime scene—by Josiah Garth's dead body. And when Wendy disappears, the loud argument she'd had with Dayna at the fair makes Abby's friend a suspect. No slouch as an investigator, Abby is drawn into the case by the suspicion cast on Dayna. Tripp joins her in order to protect her and use his own skills to help solve what turns out to be a whole series of crimes.

A complex mystery replete with characters worth caring about.

Pub Date: Dec. 27, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-4967-3968-1

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Kensington

Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

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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THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB

From the Thursday Murder Club series , Vol. 1

A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.

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Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.

The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.

A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.

Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking

Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020

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