Writing with Agatha Christie in mind, Carter draws her heroine as curious, if bordering on interfering, and her debut’s...
A solicitor can’t help but dig in a small Irish town when unidentified remains are found on the grounds of a local church.
Though she’s no detective, Benedicta O’Keeffe has a way of nosing herself into situations—or maybe it’s more a matter of being at the right place at the right time. In her capacity as a solicitor, she’s helping sell Inishowen’s Whitewater Church when she stumbles on unburied remains loose in one of the crypts. Ben has no idea who the remains could be, but she reports the incident to her kind-of-friend Sgt. Tom Molloy, though Molloy is clear the interaction is business and that Ben is to keep out of any investigation. Ben is too new in town to have a stake in the remains, but the rest of Inishowen is filled with rumors that the body belongs to Conor Devitt, who mysteriously vanished the morning that was to see him wed to Lisa McCauley. Six years after Conor disappeared, his brother Danny became a bit unhinged, and now he shows up at Ben’s office requesting her professional services while in a state too disturbed to convey what seems to be the problem or which services he needs. Ben is also approached by Conor’s former fiancee, Lisa, who’s just returned from her honeymoon and wants to have Conor officially declared dead so she can start her new life in peace. While Ben wants to help Danny and Lisa, she’s distracted by the arrival of a forensic pathologist, who coincidentally knows the secrets of Ben’s own dramatic past. Ben came to Inishowen because it was the furthest she could get from Dublin and the troubling death of her younger sister, and the arrival of the pathologist scares Ben into thinking, like the Whitewater remains, her own secrets may not stay buried.
Writing with Agatha Christie in mind, Carter draws her heroine as curious, if bordering on interfering, and her debut’s pacing as she explores the story encourages readers to seek the same connections she does.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-60809-302-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Oceanview
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.
In Archie Goodwin's 15th adventure since the death of his creator, Rex Stout, his gossipy Aunt Edna Wainwright lures him from 34th Street to his carefully unnamed hometown in Ohio to investigate the death of a well-hated bank president.
Tom Blankenship, the local police chief, thinks there’s no case since Logan Mulgrew shot himself. But Archie’s mother, Marjorie Goodwin, and Aunt Edna know lots of people with reason to have killed him. Mulgrew drove rival banker Charles Purcell out of business, forcing Purcell to get work as an auto mechanic, and foreclosed on dairy farmer Harold Mapes’ spread. Lester Newman is convinced that Mulgrew murdered his ailing wife, Lester’s sister, so that he could romance her nurse, Carrie Yeager. And Donna Newman, Lester’s granddaughter, might have had an eye on her great-uncle’s substantial estate. Nor is Archie limited to mulling over his relatives’ gossip, for Trumpet reporter Verna Kay Padgett, whose apartment window was shot out the night her column raised questions about the alleged suicide, is perfectly willing to publish a floridly actionable summary of the leading suspects that delights her editor, shocks Archie, and infuriates everyone else. The one person missing is Archie’s boss, Nero Wolfe (Death of an Art Collector, 2019, etc.), and fans will breathe a sigh of relief when he appears at Marjorie’s door, debriefs Archie, notices a telltale clue, prepares dinner for everyone, sleeps on his discovery, and arranges a meeting of all parties in Marjorie’s living room in which he names the killer.
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5988-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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