by Anna Lee Huber ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 20, 2023
A thorny mystery provides a shocking, historically based denouement.
Married sleuths go all out to save a family member.
Keira and Sebastian Gage have a well-founded reputation as private inquiry agents. So when Sebastian’s father, Lord Gage, is attacked in Yorkshire in 1832, they rush to his side along with their baby daughter, Emma; a small entourage of trusted servants; and Sebastian’s half brother, Lord Henry Kerr, whom Lord Gage has never acknowledged. Indeed, Lord Gage is a difficult, secretive man whose relationship with Sebastian is not an easy one for myriad reasons, including the elder Gage’s numerous affairs; his scorn for Keira, who’s overcoming a scandalous past; and their political differences. Lord Gage is housed in the home of Dr. Josiah Barker, who treated him after he was shot in the thigh by a local band of highwaymen. Sebastian and his father have a nasty row, but Lord Gage is surprisingly taken with Emma and shows a softer side. Although the local authorities have been informed because Lord Gage’s footman was killed in the incident, Sebastian and Keira decide that they must investigate if justice is to be done. The highwaymen are protected by the local populace, who benefit from their Robin Hood–style largesse, but since they’ve never injured anyone before, the sleuths suspect that the incident may have been a vendetta against his lordship, whose checkered past with women and secret work for the government have made him many enemies. Together with their servants and Lord Henry, they travel the area asking inconvenient questions that both put them in danger and ultimately reveal the truth.
A thorny mystery provides a shocking, historically based denouement.Pub Date: June 20, 2023
ISBN: 9780593198483
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
Share your opinion of this book
More by Anna Lee Huber
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by Anthony Horowitz ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 16, 2024
Gloriously artificial, improbable, and ingenious. Fans of both versions of Horowitz will rejoice.
What begins as a decorous whodunit set in a gated community on the River Thames turns out to be another metafictional romp for mystery writer Anthony Horowitz and his frequent collaborator, ex-DI Daniel Hawthorne.
Everyone in Riverview Close hates Giles Kenworthy, an entitled hedge fund manager who bought Riverview Lodge from chess grandmaster Adam Strauss when the failure of Adam’s chess-themed TV show forced him and his wife, Teri, to downsize to The Stables at the opposite end of the development. So the surprise when Kenworthy’s wife, retired air hostess Lynda, returns home from an evening out with her French teacher, Jean-François, to find her husband’s dead body is mainly restricted to the manner of his death: He’s been shot through the throat with an arrow. Suspects include—and seem to be limited to—Richmond GP Dr. Tom Beresford and his wife, jewelry designer Gemma; widowed ex-nuns May Winslow and Phyllis Moore; and retired barrister Andrew Pennington, whose name is one of many nods to Agatha Christie. Detective Superintendent Tariq Khan, feeling outside his element, calls in Hawthorne and his old friend John Dudley as consultants, and eventually the case is marked as solved. Five years later, Horowitz, needing to plot and write a new novel on short notice, asks Hawthorne if he can supply enough information about the case to serve as its basis, launching another prickly collaboration in which Hawthorne conceals as much as he reveals. To say more, as usual with this ultrabrainy series, would spoil the string of surprises the real-life author has planted like so many explosive devices.
Gloriously artificial, improbable, and ingenious. Fans of both versions of Horowitz will rejoice.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780063305649
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Share your opinion of this book
More by Anthony Horowitz
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by Michael Connelly ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 8, 2022
Not the best of Connelly’s procedurals, but nobody else does them better than his second-best.
A snap of the yo-yo string yanks Harry Bosch out of retirement yet again.
Los Angeles Councilman Jake Pearlman has resurrected the LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit in order to reopen the case of his kid sister, Sarah, whose 1994 murder was instantly eclipsed in the press by the O.J. Simpson case when it broke a day later. Since not even a councilor can reconstitute a police unit for a single favored case, Det. Renée Ballard and her mostly volunteer (read: unpaid) crew are expected to reopen some other cold cases as well, giving Bosch a fresh opportunity to gather evidence against Finbar McShane, the crooked manager he’s convinced executed industrial contractor Stephen Gallagher, his wife, and their two children in 2013 and buried them in a single desert grave. The case has haunted Bosch more than any other he failed to close, and he’s fine to work the Pearlman homicide if it’ll give him another crack at McShane. As it turns out, the Pearlman case is considerably more interesting—partly because the break that leads the unit to a surprising new suspect turns out to be both fraught and misleading, partly because identifying the killer is only the beginning of Bosch’s problems. The windup of the Gallagher murders, a testament to sweating every detail and following every lead wherever it goes, is more heartfelt but less wily and dramatic. Fans of the aging detective who fear that he might be mellowing will be happy to hear that “putting him on a team did not make him a team player.”
Not the best of Connelly’s procedurals, but nobody else does them better than his second-best.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-48565-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
Share your opinion of this book
More by Michael Connelly
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.