A hedge witch and her accomplished cohort investigate a murder and more.
Now that Katie Lightfoot’s solved the mystery that threatened her wedding to Declan McCarthy in Witches and Wedding Cake (2020), she’s enjoying married life and working with her aunt and uncle at the Honeybee Bakery, where everything she bakes gets a little something extra to enhance the experience. Katie, who’s not from Savannah originally, looks forward to a ghost tour, complete with tales of the exceedingly haunted city. Tour guide Teddy LaRue, who has the ability to see ghosts, announces that a woman’s just been murdered and is asking Katie to find her killer. When Teddy describes the victim, Katie realizes it’s probably Leigh Markes, an art gallery owner who was recently in the bakery with her book club when a nasty verbal fight broke out. Katie reports the crime to a detective she’s worked with before. Of course, he doesn’t believe her until the body is found, sweeping Katie up once again in the search for a killer. The job steals precious time from her own personal goal: finding Declan’s guardian spirit, Connell, who’s wandering lost in the ether. Leigh had a complicated life and a number of enemies, and Katie and her friends must use all their powers to identify the murderer and recover Connell.
Even readers who shun paranormal activities can enjoy this mystery, larded with charmingly quirky characters.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593099-24-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
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BOOK REVIEW
An actress and her entourage are kidnapped by Russians in Bohjalian’s uneven thriller.
In 1964, Hollywood’s gossip rags are agog as movie star Katie Barstow marries gallerist David Hill and takes her inner circle along on her honeymoon. And an adventuresome honeymoon it is—on safari in the Serengeti with aging big-game hunter Charlie Patton, who once helped Hemingway bag trophies. But Katie is not the star of this ensemble piece. The populous cast—a who’s who at the beginning is indispensable—includes Katie’s publicist, Reggie Stout; her agent, Peter Merrick; her best friend, Carmen Tedesco, a supporting actress who plays wisecracking sidekicks; and Terrance Dutton, Katie's recent co-star, a Black actor who's challenging Sidney Poitier's singularity in Hollywood. With obvious nods to Hemingway’s worst fear—masculine cowardice—Bohjalian adds in Felix Demeter, Carmen’s husband, a B-list screenwriter who reminds his wife of Hemingway’s weakling Francis Macomber. Felix seems a superfluous double of David, who feels inadequate because Katie is the breadwinner and his father is CIA. Then there’s Katie’s older brother, Billy Stepanov, whose abuse at the hands of their mother shaped the psychologist he is today; Billy’s pregnant wife, Margie; and Benjamin Kikwete, an apprentice safari guide. Thus, a proliferation of voices whose competing perspectives fragment rather than advance the story. The kidnapping plot seems less designed to test each character’s mettle than to exercise Bohjalian’s predilection for minute descriptions of gore. The most heartfelt portrayal here is of the Serengeti and its flora and fauna, but none of the human characters net enough face time to transcend their typecasting. The motives behind the kidnapping might have lent intrigue to the proceedings, but foreshadowing is so slight that the infodump explainer at the end leaves us shocked, mostly at how haphazard the plot is.
Perhaps A-list screenwriters will be able to spin TV gold from this sketchy treatment.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-385-54482-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
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A domestic-terrorist plot gives the adopted daughter of storied U.S. Marshal Lucas Davenport her moment to shine.
Veteran oilman Vermilion Wright knows that losing a few thousand gallons of crude is no more than an accounting error to his company but could mean serious money to whomever’s found a way to siphon it off from wells in Texas’ Permian Basin. So he asks Sen. Christopher Colles, Chair of Homeland Security and Government Affairs, to look into it, and Colles persuades 24-year-old Letty Davenport, who’s just quit his employ, to return and partner with Department of Homeland Security agent John Kaiser to track down the thieves. The plot that right-winger Jane Jael Hawkes and her confederates, most of them service veterans with disgruntled attitudes and excellent military skills, have hatched is more dire than anything Wright could have imagined. They plan to use the proceeds from the oil thefts to purchase some black-market C4 essential to a major act of terrorism that will simultaneously express their alarm about the country’s hospitality to illegal immigrants and put the Jael-Birds on the map for good. But they haven’t reckoned with Letty, another kid born on the wrong side of the tracks who can outshoot the men she’s paired with and outthink the vigilantes she finds herself facing—and who, along with her adoptive father, makes a memorable pair of “pragmatists. Really harsh pragmatists” willing to do whatever needs doing without batting an eye or losing a night’s sleep afterward.
Generations may succeed generations, but Sandford’s patented investigation/action formula hasn’t aged a whit. Bring it on.Pub Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-32868-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
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