Plenty of red herrings and an intimate look at the world of the wealthy and famous make for a rich broth of a mystery.
The magnificent mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, provide the setting for high-society murder in the Gilded Age.
Emma Cross, a society columnist for a New York newspaper, yearns to be an investigative reporter like the famous Nellie Bly. She gets a chance when she’s sent to her hometown of Newport to report on a coming-out ball which will be attended by Silas Griggson, a self-made real estate developer; Silas is of interest because one of his tenements recently collapsed with fatal consequences, a calamity he blamed on a foreman who soon turned up dead. Emma, who counts the Vanderbilts among her relatives but struggles to keep up Gull Manor, the seaside home she inherited from an aunt, has two suitors: Derrick Andrews, wealthy, handsome, and willing to help her solve mysteries (Murder at Chateau su Mer, 2017, etc.), and Jesse Whyte, a Newport detective whose lifestyle is more like her own. At the ball, Emma picks up on uncomfortable undercurrents among the guests. When Cleo Cooper-Smith takes her place on a throne illuminated by electricity, the crowd is wowed until the lights go out. Hastily arranged candlelight reveals that Cleo’s been electrocuted. Although Cleo is not universally loved and has been cruel to her handicapped older sister, her father wants the electrician arrested. Emma, who’s known Dale Hanson for years, is convinced he had nothing to do with the death, which she soon discovers was murder. With friends among the idle rich and ordinary townsfolk alike, Emma is well-placed to dig up clues, and her search takes her from sumptuous mansions to the local Army post, her stubborn, unladylike behavior putting her in danger while she ponders her options.
Plenty of red herrings and an intimate look at the world of the wealthy and famous make for a rich broth of a mystery.Pub Date: July 31, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4967-0336-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
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
A smoothly written contemporary caper paired with a murder mystery and a little meet-the-Jetsons futurism. No one does...
Written under her real name and her pseudonym, two books in one from megaselling Roberts/Robb.
Book one: Laine Tavish, gorgeous redhead and owner of a small-town antique store, isn’t about to tell the cops that she knew the old man who was hit by a car right outside her shop. Just before he took his dying breath, she recognized Willy Young, partner in crime to Big Jack O’Hara, her father. Their biggest heist: millions of dollars in hot diamonds. Her father went to prison, but not Willy, whose last words were “left it for you.” What did he leave—and where? Enter Max Gannon, insurance investigator and all-around stud, with thick, wavy, run-your-fingers-through-it hair, tawny eyes that remind Laine of a tiger, and a delicious Georgia drawl. He beds Laine pronto, and they solve the case. But some of the diamonds are still missing. . . . Book two: it’s 50 years later, and New York traffic is slower than ever: just try getting a helicab on a rainy day. But Samantha Gannon, author of a bestseller called Hot Rocks based on her grandparents’ experiences in the long-ago case, eventually makes it home from the airport to find her house-sitter Andrea dead, throat cut. Another investigation begins, spearheaded by Eve Dallas, a tough-talking but very appealing New York cop married to Roarke, a rich, eccentric genius who just barely manages to stay on the right side of the law. Is the murderer after the rest of the diamonds? And is he or she related to the master thief who betrayed Samantha’s great-grandfather? There are more burning questions, and Eve wants answers—but, first, get Central on the telelink and program the Autochef for pastrami on rye.
A smoothly written contemporary caper paired with a murder mystery and a little meet-the-Jetsons futurism. No one does Suspense Lite better than Nora.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-399-15106-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
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