Putting aside her Gilded Newport series (Murder at Beechwood, 2015, etc.), Maxwell provides a neat little mystery and a...
An aristocrat and her maid take on a case of murder.
December 1918. The Great War has ended, and the inhabitants of Foxwood Hall and their guests look forward to a happy Christmas when Phoebe Renshaw, the 19-year-old middle sister of the family, overhears her older sister, Julia, having a nasty fight with Henry Leighton, Marquess of Allerton, to whom she’s supposed to become engaged. When she refuses him, he attempts to blackmail her with a secret he claims to know about a past indiscretion. Next morning, Henry is nowhere to be found when the time comes for the family to hand out the traditional Christmas boxes to the staff and each other. When Eva Huntford, Phoebe’s lady’s maid, opens her box at her parents’ home, it contains a signet ring with a finger still attached. Several other people get boxes that contain fingers, too. The fingers appear to belong to Henry, who has still not been found. Although the police are called, they find only some footprints in the snow that lead away from and then back to Foxwood Hall; not even an extensive search discloses Henry’s body. The police, not daunted, arrest one of the servants when they find a cleaver hidden in his room and learn that his sweetheart had been pestered by Henry. Phoebe and Eva, convinced that the servant is innocent, work both above- and below-stairs to winkle out secrets that may lead to the real killer.
Putting aside her Gilded Newport series (Murder at Beechwood, 2015, etc.), Maxwell provides a neat little mystery and a heavily atmospheric look at life in a great house after the trials of the war.Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61773-830-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
Like a popcorn action flick: fun but lacking in substance.
Two wolf shifters must catch a criminal in the midst of hazardous winter weather: Action, adventure, and romance kick off a new series by Spear (Falling for the Cougar, 2019, etc.).
Private Investigator Nicole Grayson has an edge that some of her colleagues don’t. She’s a gray wolf shifter, and her heightened sense of smell makes for excellent tracking abilities. When her latest assignment, investigating a fraudulent life insurance claim, leads her to an isolated ski lodge inhabited by a group of shifter brothers, Nicole realizes that this particular mission is different. Blake Wolff has finally found peace and quiet, as he and his brothers have turned their land into a sanctuary for wolf shifters like themselves. When Nicole turns up at the lodge, sniffing around and looking for answers, Blake volunteers to help. The sooner she wraps up her investigation, the sooner Blake can return to maintaining the calm community the Wolff siblings have built. The suspense never fully delivers despite the setup of dangerous situations and the characters’ ability to shift into wolves. Of course, the bad guys get caught and the good guys prevail, but the stakes never seem terribly high. With corny, on-the-nose details such as having Wolff and Grayson as surnames for gray wolf shifters, it's hard to tell if Spear is in on the joke or if some things sounded better in theory than reality. The brightest spot here, as in most of Spears’ books, is her dedication to writing strong heroines with interesting professions, and Nicole fits perfectly into that box. She’s capable, competent, and a force to be reckoned with in a difficult situation. Blake is happy to let her take the lead without any egos getting in the way, which is something all readers will appreciate.
Like a popcorn action flick: fun but lacking in substance.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4926-9775-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As tangled and turbulent as the hero’s nightmares, and that’s saying quite a bit.
Having survived his tempestuous debut, P.T. Marsh, of Georgia's Mason Falls Police Department, is back for more—including some residue from that first case that just won’t go away.
Dispatched like an errand boy to wealthy real estate mogul Ennis Fultz’s home to find out why he hasn’t joined his bridge buddies, Mayor Stems and interim police chief Jeff Pernacek, for their monthly game, Marsh and his partner, Remy Morgan, find Fultz dead in his bed. It turns out that his passing, devoutly longed for by so many of the people he’d crushed or outwitted on his way to the top, was helped along by the strategic dose of nitrogen somebody substituted for the oxygen he inhaled regularly, especially when he was expecting particular demands on his virility. Marsh and Morgan quickly focus on two candidates who might have made those demands: Suzy Kang, a recent visitor who was so eager to cover any traces that she’d been to Fultz’s house that she sold the car she’d driven there, and Connie Fultz, the victim’s ex-wife and perhaps his current lover, who acidly swats them away and tells them: “Look for some little gal who’s into bondage.” McMahon excels in sweating the procedural details of the investigation, which take the partners from a search for Suzy Kang and that missing car to a not-so-accidental car crash that’s evidently targeted a young girl who has no idea she’s implicated in the case. But he’s set his sights higher, taking in everything from a civil suit the relatives of the perp Marsh shot in The Good Detective (2019) have launched against him to a possible conspiracy behind the deaths of his deeply grieved wife and son, all of it larded with Georgia attitude and truisms, a few of which rise to eloquence (“I wasn’t good at faith. I was good at proof”).
As tangled and turbulent as the hero’s nightmares, and that’s saying quite a bit.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53556-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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