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JANE DARROWFIELD AND THE MADWOMAN NEXT DOOR

The heroine is soothing, sturdy company, but neither the main case nor the minicase leads to much of a solution.

One and perhaps a quarter new assignments for the Cambridge, Massachusetts, problem-solver who debuted in the aptly titled Jane Darrowfield, Professional Busybody (2019).

Megan Larsen doesn’t think she’s crazy, but she sure has been acting strange. She's been waking up in the middle of the night convinced she’s seen a bright light only to find her house in darkness and losing both sleep and self-confidence in the process. All of this makes it hard for her to focus on her work as a lawyer—a particular problem now that her review for a possible partnership is coming up. Megan wants Jane, her next-door neighbor, to determine whether or not she’s sane. No sooner has Jane suggested a few common-sense steps to help answer Megan’s question and identified a possible biological cause of her troubles and three men in her life who might be gaslighting her—an old friend and colleague, an ex-boyfriend, and a disastrous online date—than Megan vanishes. Her father, high-powered attorney Edwin Larsen, is unconcerned (some father!), but Jane presses on, counting on the fact that she’s on much better terms with Detective Tony Alvarez than with Megan’s father, realtor, or security provider. She even finds time to take on a tiny second case brought to her by Ralph Pilchner, another neighbor, who claims that Gordon and Pam Marshall have alienated the affections of Ralph’s cat, Roo, by feeding her themselves.

The heroine is soothing, sturdy company, but neither the main case nor the minicase leads to much of a solution.

Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-4967-3075-6

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Kensington

Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020

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A COLORFUL SCHEME

Despite the title, the by-the-numbers dishing and scheming are anything but colorful.

The wedding of a couple of people who know each other very well indeed forms the backdrop to Davis’ fourth Pen and Ink mystery.

All the 500 guests gathered for the Georgetown nuptials wish the best for the happy couple even though romance novelist Jacqueline Liebhaber has already been married twice, professor John Maxwell three times, and each of them once to the other, in a marriage that was shattered years ago by the kidnapping of their young daughter, Caroline, who was never found. Now that they’re getting back together, book reviewer Margarite Herbert-Grant joins a crowd of authors who know her rapier tongue all too well—debut government-intrigue storyteller Buzz Powers; literary novelist Arthur Bedlingham; his assistant, unpublished novelist Evan McDowell; and romance novelist Gabriella Archambeau (though not her husband; reclusive bestselling thriller writer Griffin Corbyn’s sent his excuses)—to celebrate, and waitress and aspiring reporter Cara Melton, who’s somehow crashed the party, demands to know just how John and Jacquie feel about Caroline’s loss. Florrie Fox, the adult-coloring-book creator who manages Color Me Read, the bookstore John owns, does her best to protect the couple from Cara’s intrusive questions. Despite her earlier brushes with homicide, Florrie can’t stop one of the wedding guests from feeding Evan enough THC–laced brownies to make him a perfect candidate for drowning in John’s swimming pool. But every cloud has a silver lining, and the horrid Cara’s stabbed to death as well. The mystery is perfunctory, the assembled authors drawn with a cartoonist’s brush, and the killer forgettable, but veteran Davis keeps a particularly deft surprise, along with half a dozen recipes, in reserve.

Despite the title, the by-the-numbers dishing and scheming are anything but colorful.

Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-4967-2465-6

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Kensington

Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022

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SHADY HOLLOW

A series debut that retains many of the conventions of a village cozy, just more broadly drawn, like a greeting card.

Under the fig-leaf Black pseudonym, newcomers Jocelyn Cole and Sharon Nagel introduce an animals-only village in which members of many species coexist, except when they’re killing each other.

Nobody much liked Otto Sumpf, but nobody can imagine who disliked the toad enough to stab him in the back and dump him into a pond. The mystery deepens when Solomon Broadhead, the adder who serves as Shady Hollow’s medical examiner, announces that Otto has been poisoned as well, presumably by something introduced into the bottle of plum wine foxy reporter Vera Vixen found near his body. Tracing the bottle to its likely source, the Bamboo Patch vegetarian restaurant, she learns from owner Sun Li, a giant panda with a medical background, that the likely agent was heartstill, a little of which goes a long way. Of the two bears in the local police, Chief Theodore Meade is as usual out past his depth, and the paw prints at the crime scene have led Deputy Orville Braun to arrest crooked raccoon Lefty, who’s obviously innocent of this particular crime. The killer meanwhile moves on to bigger game, wealthy sawmill owner Reginald von Beaverpelt, who survives one murder attempt thanks to Sun Li but not a second, leaving Shady Hollow on shaky financial ground. Although it’s clear that Reginald has been carrying on with rest-home aide Ruby Ewing, the authors mercifully avoid any lurid details of beaver-sheep sex. Instead, intrepid Vera, the most charming figure here, dutifully checks alibis and interviews suspects who draw more clearly on human than animal stereotypes.

A series debut that retains many of the conventions of a village cozy, just more broadly drawn, like a greeting card.

Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-593-31571-2

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021

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