A promising series debut, sometimes humorous, often puzzling, and peopled with believable characters.
A bookstore owner goes all out to save her best friend from a murder charge in this series kickoff from Lillard (A Family for Gracie, 2019, etc.).
Arlo Stanley’s nomadic life with her hippie parents left her with a strong urge to settle down. She chose Sugar Springs, Mississippi, the small town where she’d been allowed to stay for her high school years. Just before the 10th Annual All School Class Reunion, the dead body of former classmate Wallace J. Harrison is found on the sidewalk outside her shop, Books & More. Wally, whose book was a recent New York Times bestseller, had a stunning wife, Daisy James-Harrison, and a lovely mistress/assistant, Inna Kolisnychenko. So did he jump, or was he pushed? Chief Matthew “Mads” Keller was Arlo’s high school squeeze until football broke them up. Like everyone else in Sugar Springs, he knows that Arlo’s best friend, Chloe Carter, the foodie "More" in Books & More, had a child with Wally in high school whom he refused to acknowledge. Taxed with her motive, Chloe admits that Wally came to see her wanting to get back into his son’s life, but she doesn’t think the arrogant Wally would kill himself. When Mads arrests Chloe based on a coffee cup laced with poison mushrooms, Arlo resolves to prove her innocent. When Sam Tucker, the man she turned to after she broke up with Mads, arrives in town to care for his sick mother, Arlo’s life becomes even more complicated as she ponders her relationships with the two men she may still love. Luckily, Arlo’s book club ladies, who’ve been around forever and know every secret in town, are thrilled to help Arlo as she desperately chases down clues.
A promising series debut, sometimes humorous, often puzzling, and peopled with believable characters.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-8777-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Three quick, enjoyable reads to get you in a murderous Christmas spirit.
Three familiar sleuths each get a turn in this trio of cozy Christmas mysteries.
First, O’Connor (Murder in Galway, 2019, etc.) dives into Siobhán O’Sullivan’s past. Just graduated from the Garda College and not due to report for duty until the New Year, she’s busy preparing for Christmas when she sees a sign advertising a missing dog and links the disappearance to that of her own family dog and others around town. When the town Santy, Paddy O’Shea, is discovered floating dead in a dunk tank he’s filled with hot chocolate, all the missing dogs are also found, waiting in vain to be part of his extravagant show. Now Siobhán must help catch Santy's killer. Next up, Day (Strangled Eggs and Ham, 2019, etc.) presents South Lick, Indiana, cafe/country store owner Robbie Jordan, whose boyfriend Abe’s father, Howard O’Neill, has secretly acquired Cocoa, a rescued Lab puppy, as a Christmas gift for Abe’s son, Sean. When Howard’s business associate, Jed Greenberg, is found dead on an icy sidewalk, tangled in Cocoa’s leash, it turns out to be murder. Though Jed had plenty of enemies, Howard is a particularly choice suspect because he’d just learned that Jed had cheated him in a business deal. In the final tale, Erickson (Death by Café Mocha, 2019, etc.) features cafe/bookstore owner Krissy Hancock, a locally renowned sleuth who reluctantly accompanies her friend Rita Jablonski to a remote warehouse, where Lewis Coates, whose attention to detail is obsessive, has installed an escape room. Each member of the small group is given their own room whose door code they must determine from cryptic clues. They all manage to escape to a large locked room where they find the corpse of Coates. A prick Krissy finds on his finger and traces to a trick mug strongly suggests that one of the players is also a killer.
Three quick, enjoyable reads to get you in a murderous Christmas spirit.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2360-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Relax, enjoy, and marvel anew at the power of unbridled fictional invention.
Rejoice, fans of American madness who’ve sought fulfillment in political reportage. South Florida’s master farceur (Skink—No Surrender, 2014, etc.) is back to reassure you that fiction is indeed stranger than truth.
Even though a prefatory note indicates that both the come-hither title and the stuff about giant Gambian pouched rats are rooted in reality, no one but Hiaasen could have dreamed up the complications arising from the collision of Merry Mansfield with talent agent Lane Coolman—a literal collision, since she rams his rented car while shaving her bikini area in the driver's seat of a Firebird. Make that multiple collisions, since Lane turns out to be only the latest victim of Merry and her partner Zeto’s kidnap-for-hire schemes. In this case, he’s the wrong victim, mistaken for beach-replenishment contractor Martin Trebeaux, whose swindling has put him on the wrong side of Calzone crime family capo Dominick "Big Noogie" Aeola. Since Coolman’s being held captive, he can’t be on hand to walk his client Buck Nance, the reality star of Bayou Brethren, though a personal appearance at the Parched Pirate, and Buck goes off script into a racist rant that sparks a demonstration and sends him fleeing, though he's still capable of inspiring Benny Krill, a murderous apprentice racist who dreams of joining him on his show. After laboring in vain to persuade Jon David Ampergrodt, his boss at Platinum Artists Management, as well as Merry and Zeto that he’s worth ransoming, Coolman escapes, but it doesn’t matter: he’s still confined in the zoo that’s Key West, where liability lawyer Brock Richardson’s fiancee loses the $200,000 ring he didn’t bother to resize after his fatter former fiancee returned it, and when his neighbor, health inspector Andrew Yancy, discovers it, he hides it in the hummus in the hope that an indefinite search for the bauble will stall Richardson’s plan to build a McMansion that will obstruct Yancy’s sea view. Etc. How can Hiaasen possibly tie together all this monkey business in the end? His delirious plotting is so fine-tuned that preposterous complications that would strain lesser novelists fit right into his antic world.
Relax, enjoy, and marvel anew at the power of unbridled fictional invention.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-385-34974-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
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