Another atmospheric, beautifully written mystery in which Hambly continues to explore the repugnant practice of classifying...
A rewardingly complex tale of murder in families related by blood and stratified by color in 1839 New Orleans.
Benjamin January (Murder in July, 2017, etc.) is a Paris-trained physician and musician whose mother, Livia, was the mistress of a wealthy Creole man who'd purchased her as a slave and then freed her. His sister, Dominique, is the current mistress of Henri Viellard, a nephew of Veryl St-Chinian, an elderly Creole man with a large interest in many plantations who plans to marry a young Irish girl with a sordid past. January, who is dark-skinned, is asked to play at the wedding, to which many of his pale-complexioned relatives are invited. His sister Olympe, a voodooienne, warns him of danger at Cold Bayou, a remote, crumbling sugar plantation totally unsuited to housing wedding guests. Louisiana law requires every member of a family-owned property to agree on decisions. Because Veryl’s bride, Ellie, would inherit his large share of the estate, his family is doing everything possible to stop the marriage. First a voodoo charm is found in Ellie’s dress. Then the steamboat arrives without the priest but with Ellie’s thuggish uncle, Mick Trask, accompanied by several bully boys. Things get worse. In an attempt to break up a fight, January falls from a balcony and breaks an ankle. Valla, Ellie’s light-complexioned house slave, claims that Ellie’s father loaned money to the man who used to own Livia and was never repaid, which would make Livia and her entire family slaves. Unremitting heat and humidity blanket the plantation, portending a storm as the squabbling families wait for the priest. January is caring for a man hurt in a duel when word arrives that Valla has been murdered. In the dark she could have been mistaken for her mistress, but whichever woman was the target, January knows that a black person will be blamed. When Trask seizes upon January as the culprit, he’s shackled in a room as the plantation is flooded and must rely on others to gather clues and uncover the real killer.
Another atmospheric, beautifully written mystery in which Hambly continues to explore the repugnant practice of classifying people by the color of their skin.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8798-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
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
A smoothly written contemporary caper paired with a murder mystery and a little meet-the-Jetsons futurism. No one does...
Written under her real name and her pseudonym, two books in one from megaselling Roberts/Robb.
Book one: Laine Tavish, gorgeous redhead and owner of a small-town antique store, isn’t about to tell the cops that she knew the old man who was hit by a car right outside her shop. Just before he took his dying breath, she recognized Willy Young, partner in crime to Big Jack O’Hara, her father. Their biggest heist: millions of dollars in hot diamonds. Her father went to prison, but not Willy, whose last words were “left it for you.” What did he leave—and where? Enter Max Gannon, insurance investigator and all-around stud, with thick, wavy, run-your-fingers-through-it hair, tawny eyes that remind Laine of a tiger, and a delicious Georgia drawl. He beds Laine pronto, and they solve the case. But some of the diamonds are still missing. . . . Book two: it’s 50 years later, and New York traffic is slower than ever: just try getting a helicab on a rainy day. But Samantha Gannon, author of a bestseller called Hot Rocks based on her grandparents’ experiences in the long-ago case, eventually makes it home from the airport to find her house-sitter Andrea dead, throat cut. Another investigation begins, spearheaded by Eve Dallas, a tough-talking but very appealing New York cop married to Roarke, a rich, eccentric genius who just barely manages to stay on the right side of the law. Is the murderer after the rest of the diamonds? And is he or she related to the master thief who betrayed Samantha’s great-grandfather? There are more burning questions, and Eve wants answers—but, first, get Central on the telelink and program the Autochef for pastrami on rye.
A smoothly written contemporary caper paired with a murder mystery and a little meet-the-Jetsons futurism. No one does Suspense Lite better than Nora.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-399-15106-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
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