Penrose deftly combines a Regency romance with a tricky mystery that delves into social unrest and the darker side of this...
A daring pair of Regency sleuths tackle a series of coldblooded murders.
The Earl of Wrexford met Charlotte Sloane when they were forced to work together to solve a dastardly crime (Murder on Black Swan Lane, 2017). Wrexford is a wealthy, easily bored aristocrat with a scientific bent. For her part, the mysterious Charlotte, under the nom de plume A.J. Quill, which she took over from her late husband, uses her artistic talents and sharp wit to sell her satirical drawings. When Wrexford and his friend Christopher Sheffield stumble over the brutally murdered body of well-known inventor Elihu Ashton, he can’t refuse the widow’s request to find the killer. Isobel Ashton suspects that her husband’s killer wanted to steal the rights to his new invention, which could make the first person to file a patent very wealthy indeed. Charlotte, meanwhile, is moving to a larger house in a better neighborhood along with Raven and Hawk, the chief boys among the street urchins she uses to keep up with the latest gossip and misdeeds that provide grist for her satires. After Wrexford enlists Charlotte’s network to help track down Ashton’s killer, their suspicions are divided among the widow, who is stunningly attractive but amazingly cool; Ashton’s secretary and assistant; and investors hungry to enrich themselves. Gabriel Hollis, who had something to do with the note that lured Ashton to his death, is the next to die. Although the murders have been set up to look like the work of a group of radical workers whose jobs have been taken over by machines, the sleuths feel more personal relationships hold the key to the case.
Penrose deftly combines a Regency romance with a tricky mystery that delves into social unrest and the darker side of this storied period.Pub Date: March 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1079-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Sports agent Myron Bolitar is free, white, and well over 21, so there’s no reason he shouldn’t drop everything at a moment’s notice to go on a Caribbean idyll with CNN anchor Terese Collins. But he pays a high price for his three weeks of quality sex. When he returns, his partner, Esperanza Diaz, is gone from their New York office, arrested for the murder of their client Clu Haid. The aging Yankee pitcher had fought with Esperanza just days after failing a drug test and trying to track Myron down to warn him about some obscure danger. Now that Myron’s friend Win Lockwood, who managed the securities account Clu had just withdrawn $200,000 from, has dragged him home, Esperanza refuses to talk to him; her lawyer tells him to take a hike; and Frank Ache, Jr., the mob scion whose agency has been poaching Myron’s clients in his absence, doesn’t want him poking around in the case either. No matter: Myron’s off and running on an exhilarating trail that’ll take him from a transsexual bar called Take A Chance, where you never know whether the bouncers beating you up are really men or not, all the way back in time to an episode from his own past that he’d like to forget. These adventures are greased by a thousand wisecracks, many of them funny and none of them developing the plot or deepening the characters. The crackerjack mystery itself does that: as in One False Move (1998), Myron is as skilled at solving puzzles as his creator is at devising them. Somebody should tell the guy he doesn’t need all the putdowns to shine like a star.
Pub Date: June 11, 1999
ISBN: 0-385-32371-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2000
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous...
A struggling student’s English assignment turns into a mission to solve a 30-year-old murder.
Joe Talbert has had very few breaks in his 21 years. The son of a single and very alcoholic mother, he’s worked hard to save enough money to leave his home in Austin, Minnesota, for the University of Minnesota. Although he has to leave his autistic younger brother, Jeremy Naylor, to the dubious care of their mother, Joe is determined to beat the odds and get his degree. For an assignment in his English class, he decides to interview Carl Iverson, a man convicted of raping and killing a 14-year-old girl. Carl, who maintains his innocence, is dying of cancer and has been released to a nursing home to end his life in lonely but unrepentant pain. The more Joe learns about Carl—a Vietnam vet with two Purple Hearts and a Silver Cross—the more the young man questions the conviction. Joe’s plan to write a short biography and earn an easy A turns into something more. Even after his mother is arrested for drunk driving and guilt-trips Joe into ransacking his college fund to bail her out, he soldiers on with the project, though her irresponsibility forces him to take Jeremy into his care. But it’s his younger brother who cracks the code of the long-dead murder victim’s secret diary and an attractive neighbor, Lila Nash, who has her own agenda for helping Joe solve the mystery, whatever the risk.
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous than championing a bitter old man convicted of a horrific crime.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61614-998-7
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Seventh Street Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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