Though Abbott resolves the mystery posed by Shots in the Dark (2016), which first introduced the threatening letters,...
Synesthesia, a neurological condition that, among other sensory-heightening effects, allows you to see music and smell colors, helps a bar owner find the identity of a threatening letter writer.
Mackenzie "Mack" Dalton, the owner of Mack’s Bar, has a history of solving mysteries. Now, however, she’s embroiled in a mystery of her own stemming from a series of threatening letters that promise death to those closest to her if she doesn’t follow the clues provided by the letter writer. As she tries to solve the mysteries posed by the letters, Mack also ponders the bigger mystery of who’s writing them. Though she’s been instructed not to seek the help of the police, including her boyfriend, Detective Duncan Albright, the threat has merely sent her collaboration behind closed doors. While she’s still seeing Duncan, she’s found the perfect cover in Malachi O’Reilly, an undercover cop solving a case of his own whose details are withheld from readers. Mal and Duncan aren’t Mack’s only resources: she’s also been using the bar as a gathering place for the Capone Club, a group of friends who are equally devoted to a good mystery. If she’s lucky, the club will help Mack solve the letter writer’s clues, buying her time to figure out her mysterious correspondent’s motives and identity. As she investigates alongside Mal, with whom she shares a growing mutual attraction, Mack begins to suspect that the Capone Club may not help her as much as she’d hoped because the letter writer may actually be a club member. Luckily, Mack’s synesthesia, a neurological quirk she’s turned into an asset, may give her an edge that guides her to the writer’s identity before anyone gets hurt.
Though Abbott resolves the mystery posed by Shots in the Dark (2016), which first introduced the threatening letters, there’s hardly enough plot here for a stand-alone volume.Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4967-0172-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
All these problems are handsomely solved at the unsurprising cost of making the human characters less interesting than the...
Just when you thought you’d seen a detective in every guise imaginable, here comes one in sheep’s clothing.
For years, George Glenn hasn’t been close to anyone but his sheep. Everyday he lets them out, pastures them, reads to them and brings them safely back home to his barn in the guilelessly named Irish village of Glennkill. Now George lies dead, pinned to the ground by a spade. Although his flock haven’t had much experience with this sort of thing, they’re determined to bring his killer to justice. There are of course several obstacles, and debut novelist Swann deals with them in appealingly matter-of-fact terms. Sheep can’t talk to people; they can only listen in on conversations between George’s widow Kate and Bible-basher Beth Jameson. Not even the smartest of them, Othello, Miss Maple (!) and Mopple the Whale, can understand much of what the neighborhood priest is talking about, except that his name is evidently God. They’re afraid to confront suspects like butcher Abraham Rackham and Gabriel O’Rourke, the Gaelic-speaking charmer who’s raising a flock for slaughter. And even after a series of providential discoveries and brainwaves reveals the answer to the riddle, they don’t know how to tell the Glennkill citizenry.
All these problems are handsomely solved at the unsurprising cost of making the human characters less interesting than the sheep. But the sustained tone of straight-faced wonderment is magical.Pub Date: June 5, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-385-52111-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Flying Dolphin/Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
You have seven days to live after reading this review. Is that your phone ringing?
First in a trilogy by a newcomer publishing house that promises high-class works from Japan.
Ring has sold three million copies in its native country, says Vertical, been filmed there, and the film remade here as a postmodern horror mystery released by DreamWorks as The Ring. In one month in 1990, four Japanese students who live fairly near each other die mysteriously of heart failure. Tomoko Oishi dies in the family kitchen, Shuichi Iwata on his motorcycle while waiting for the light to change at an intersection, and Haruko Tsuji and Takehiko Nomi in the front seat of a car while undressing for sexplay. All four have faces constricted with horror and seem to be pulling their heads off or blinding their vision. Tomoko happens to be the niece of Kazuyuki Asakawa, a journalist, who links all the deaths and sees a story in it. Japanese journalism has been through a heavy period of occult reports, and Asakawa’s editor only hopes it has all died down. A card Asakawa finds in Tomoko’s desk leads him to discover that all four victims had watched a video tape they’d been warned against viewing—a tape, as it happens, that’s something of a virus (in Asakawa, its horrific images cause sweat and shortness of breath). Then comes the message: Those who view these images are fated to die at this exact moment one week from now. If you do not wish to die, you must follow these instructions exactly . . . . Then the phone rings (hence Ring) and unspeakable bugs invade Asakawa until he slams down the receiver. Too late, though: he has a week to live. He brings in brainy Ruiji to help him, and Ruiji watches the tape. This stifling sense—is it an evil energy? Then Asakawa’s wife and daughter watch it . . . .
You have seven days to live after reading this review. Is that your phone ringing?Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-932234-00-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Vertical
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003
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