A gorgeous murder mystery that explores what it means to be human—the pain and the love.
A recently divorced woman confronts her loss, even as she helps to solve two murders—and survives a belligerent storm.
Ellery Wainwright arrives at Big Sur’s Resort at Broken Point to celebrate her 20th anniversary—alone. Following her recent divorce, she’s been adrift, torturing herself with memories, trying to stay strong for her kids, and this “vacation” seems like a mistake until she meets Ravi and Nina, two other guests, who take her under their wings. The resort, known for its eclectic art collection in addition to the beautiful views and luxury accommodations, is also hosting a wedding. It’s a shock when the groom leaves the bride at the altar. Of course, it’s even more of a shock when Ellery discovers the groom’s body floating in the pool the next morning. Was he dead before the wedding? If so, who sent the breakup text message? When another guest dies shortly after, victim of a suspicious fall, Ellery, Ravi, and Nina continue their amateur sleuthing—but their biggest problem might be the weather. A storm of the century bears down on Big Sur, washing out bridges and roads, stranding the guests in this extremely clever version of a locked-room mystery. While the structure might not be completely original, there’s a lot about this book to set it apart, including the wild danger of the setting. Most notable are the characters who, while perhaps representing some familiar types, truly do jump off the page as three-dimensional, engaging people, Ellery most of all. Her heartbreak is real, and relatable, as is her past trauma of witnessing another death and her fierce love for her children. Like any successful literary detective, she is “the one on the outside, watching,” and Condie gives her the empathy, and grace, to understand that “you get to keep that. The way you let yourself love someone and really feel it, and the loss.” In this way, the novel is more about healing than it is about death.
A gorgeous murder mystery that explores what it means to be human—the pain and the love.Pub Date: June 4, 2024
ISBN: 9781538757604
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett has been shot plenty of times before. But this time may be the last.
As Joe hovers between life and death in a Billings hospital, Box indicates that Dorn Peddy and James Dale O’Bryan are the two men who ambushed him, shot him, and left him for dead. But he doesn’t reveal who hired them or why. That’s left up to Joe’s three daughters: bird-abatement firm chief executive Sheridan, Bozeman private eye April, and University of Wyoming undergrad Lucy. Since the man who reported the incident to the Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department has disappeared, the most that newly appointed Sheriff Steve Sondergard can do is to warn Sheridan and her sisters away from the case. But the fact that both the shooters and the witness seem to have come from one of exactly three places presents an obvious appeal to the younger Picketts, who plan to each visit one place and question the owners simultaneously before they can warn each other that anyone’s coming. The only problem is that all the possible suspects—billionaire Michael Thompson and his wife, Brandy, of the Double Diamond Ranch; ranchers John and Shelby Bucholz, of the Bucholz Cattle Company; and secretive sisters Lisa and Lainie McElwee, of McElwee Land and Cattle Ranch—act equally guilty. As Box unspools a series of flashbacks showing what Joe was up to in the weeks before the ambush, one question assumes paramount importance: Can Joe’s daughters identify which of them is behind the plot to murder their father before the hired gunmen visit the hospital and try again?
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9780593851098
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
