Mystery fans will be delighted by this first installment in a promising new series.
A small town by the water is shaken when an online influencer is killed in Ross’ mystery novel.
Shae Brunell has worked hard to establish and run her business taking tourists to see the jellyfish at night in Florida’s Endless Islands. But everything goes pear-shaped when, on a tour, she discovers the dead body of Emily Larson, an influencer with an aggressive online following. Shae soon finds herself being harassed by internet sleuths; her business seems to be all but over. She turns to her friend Pete Brown, who grew up with her on the island, for help in her time of crisis. Pete goes to his friends in the local police, but the chief’s response is less than helpful—Emily’s death has put a damper on local business, and those in charge want the matter swept under the rug before the economy suffers permanent damage. The death is ruled accidental, but many find that hard to believe, and some say those in power are trying to cover something up (“Why hadn’t the police done some simple investigation?”). As Pete continues to try to help, he learns that Shae is hiding some pretty big secrets about what happened the night she found Emily’s body. He also discovers that Catherine Mellon, a sweet woman who’s practically royalty on the island, has her own secrets to hide. The author delivers an excellent mystery with many unpredictable twists and turns. The alternating point-of-view perspectives of Shae and Pete create a compelling contrast regarding the mystery (and each other). Ross masterfully provides clues to the murderer’s identity while leading readers off track with red herrings. The large cast of characters is engaging and varied, including Shae, the small business owner struggling to make ends meet; Catherine, the ostensibly upstanding citizen; and Sheriff Carter, who seems unwilling to go against his superiors’ motives.
Mystery fans will be delighted by this first installment in a promising new series.Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2023
ISBN: 9798867613327
Page Count: 241
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Feeney improves on her debut with a taut suspense plot, many gleeful twists and turns, and suspects galore.
A news presenter and a police detective are brought together by murders in the British village where they both grew up.
There is precious little that can be revealed about the plot of Feeney’s third novel without spoilers, as the author has woven surprises and plot twists and suspicious linkages into nearly every one of her brief, first-person chapters, written in three alternating narrative voices. “Hers” is Anna Andrews, a wannabe anchor on a BBC news program whose lucky break comes when the body of one of her school friends is found brutally murdered in their hometown, a woodsy little spot called Blackdown. “His” is DCI Jack Harper, head of the Major Crime Team in Blackdown, where major crimes were rather few until now. The third is unnamed but clearly the killer’s. Happily, none of the three is an unreliable narrator—good thing because plenty of people are sick of that—but none is exactly 100% forthcoming either. Which only makes sense, because you can't have reveals without secrets. In a small town like Blackdown, everybody knows everybody, so it’s not too surprising that Anna and Jack have a tragic past or that each has connections to all the victims and suspects while not being totally free from suspicion themselves. Who is that sneaky third narrator? On the way to figuring that out, expect high school mean girls, teen lesbian action, mutilated corpses, nasty things happening to kittens, and—as seems de rigueur in British thrillers—plenty of drinking and wisecracks, sometimes in tandem. “Sadly, my sister has the same taste in wine as she does in men; too cheap, too young, and headache-inducing.”
Feeney improves on her debut with a taut suspense plot, many gleeful twists and turns, and suspects galore.Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26608-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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