This book’s scientist protagonist is a good enough sleuth to handle a more engaging mystery.
In Morin’s debut thriller, a neuroscientist starts a murder investigation after a grad student’s bludgeoned body turns up in her research lab.
A Friday afternoon faculty meeting puts professor Yvette Bilodeau so far behind that she has to spend her Saturday at the university’s laboratory. But the loss of her day off is no longer a concern after she spots the bloody corpse of her student Mike DesFleur on the lab floor. Detective Brandell Young gets the case, and he and Yvette are initially at a loss as to why someone killed Mike with an ice-breaking hammer. For one, there doesn’t appear to be anything missing from the lab. Anonymous calls to the biology department’s chairman suggest that Mike fabricated his research data and was too busy philandering to do lab work. But Yvette and Brandell, who often discuss the case, suspect the murderer was after something that Mike was working on. Later, when an unknown person pushes past Yvette one morning as she walks into the darkened lab, it seems to confirm the theory. Brandell’s investigation soon includes a second murder, and Yvette realizes that someone did indeed steal something from the lab; she branches off on her own to find the thief. The novel begins as a straight-ahead mystery; Brandell, at one point, considers each of Yvette’s students, and even Yvette herself, as viable suspects. The story reveals the identity of the murderer about halfway through, however, and even details surrounding the first death. As a result, the narrative loses some of its steam, as Yvette becomes more worried about getting access to her lab for her students’ classes. However, Morin also provides a hefty amount of perspective from a clearly disturbed psychopath, who’d probably kill more people if not maintaining a social pretense. It’s certainly fun to see whether Yvette and Brandell’s parallel investigations will merge together and single out the same perp. However, because readers are already aware of the killer’s identity and motive, the ending is a bit nondescript.
This book’s scientist protagonist is a good enough sleuth to handle a more engaging mystery.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4917-8498-3
Page Count: 230
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This one has it all: sexual predation, financial skulduggery, reluctant heroism, even the power of social media.
A compelling, complex thriller as modern as tomorrow.
Mina (The Long Drop, 2017, etc.) leaves historical Glasgow and sets this crackling tale in the very moment. Sophie Bukaran is living as Anna McDonald; she's hidden herself in Glasgow, in marriage to a lawyer, in being mother to two girls. Then one November morning, between episodes of a true-crime podcast called Death and the Dana, her life "explode[s]." Her best friend, Estelle, is at the door, and Anna's husband reveals that he and Estelle are lovers and they're leaving with the girls. Anna considers suicide, but the podcast distracts her. Leon Parker and his family have died aboard the Dana, and the ship's cook has been convicted. The podcast asserts that the cook could not be guilty and the deaths were the result of a murder-suicide committed by Parker. But Anna knew Leon Parker and feels he could not be the culprit, so she decides to try to learn more about his fate. When Estelle's anorexic and feckless husband, Fin, a minor rock-and-roll celebrity, appears at her door, he is caught up in her decision, and they eventually create a companion podcast that details their explorations. But in the process Anna and Fin are photographed and the pictures posted online, so Anna's quest becomes entwined with threats to Sophie Bukaran's life. Years earlier Sophie was raped by members of a beloved football team, and her accusations threatened the team's reputation and value. When the only corroborator of her testimony was silenced, Sophie was discredited in the usual manner: Her morals were questionable, she was possibly drunk, she was seeking money. Dismissed and subjected to public vilification, Sophie disappeared. But a new witness has come forward and could confirm Sophie's accusations, and her reappearance again threatens a financial empire. As Fin's podcast becomes wildly popular and he and Anna begin to unravel the mystery of Leon Parker's death, the assassins seeking Sophie close in.
This one has it all: sexual predation, financial skulduggery, reluctant heroism, even the power of social media.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-52850-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
Fans who still mourn the passing of Agatha Christie, the model who’s evoked here in dozens of telltale details, will welcome...
A preternaturally brainy novel within a novel that’s both a pastiche and a deconstruction of golden-age whodunits.
Magpie Murders, bestselling author Alan Conway’s ninth novel about Greek/German detective Atticus Pünd, kicks off with the funeral of Mary Elizabeth Blakiston, devoted housekeeper to Sir Magnus Pye, who’s been found at the bottom of a steep staircase she’d been vacuuming in Pye Hall, whose every external door was locked from the inside. Her demise has all the signs of an accident until Sir Magnus himself follows her in death, beheaded with a sword customarily displayed with a full suit of armor in Pye Hall. Conway's editor, Susan Ryeland, does her methodical best to figure out which of many guilty secrets Conway has provided the suspects in Saxby-on-Avon—Rev. Robin Osborne and his wife, Henrietta; Mary’s son, Robert, and his fiancee, Joy Sanderling; Joy’s boss, surgeon Emilia Redwing, and her elderly father; antiques dealers Johnny and Gemma Whitehead; Magnus’ twin sister, Clarissa; and Lady Frances Pye and her inevitable lover, investor Jack Dartford—is most likely to conceal a killer, but she’s still undecided when she comes to the end of the manuscript and realizes the last chapter is missing. Since Conway in inconveniently unavailable, Susan, in the second half of the book, attempts to solve the case herself, questioning Conway’s own associates—his sister, Claire; his ex-wife, Melissa; his ex-lover, James Taylor; his neighbor, hedge fund manager John White—and slowly comes to the realization that Conway has cast virtually all of them as fictional avatars in Magpie Murders and that the novel, and indeed Conway’s entire fictional oeuvre, is filled with a mind-boggling variety of games whose solutions cast new light on murders fictional and nonfictional.
Fans who still mourn the passing of Agatha Christie, the model who’s evoked here in dozens of telltale details, will welcome this wildly inventive homage/update/commentary as the most fiendishly clever puzzle—make that two puzzles—of the year.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-264522-7
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
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