by Bernard Knight ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2012
Knight (Grounds for Appeal, 2012, etc.) has based the case on his own experiences in Malaya in the 1950s. What it lacks in...
A young pathologist’s national service duties take him to an exotic land and plunge him into a murder investigation.
Commonwealth troops are battling Chinese communists in Malaya—part paradise, part hellhole—but disease is the real enemy for doctors and their patients. As they sit in The Dog, the local hangout for male and female officers and the local rubber plantation owners and their spouses, newly arrived pathologist Tom Howden’s gossipy friend Percy fills him in on the local scandal, much of which revolves around gorgeous Diane Robertson and her unfaithful husband, James. Long rumored to be having it off with his manager Douglas Mackay’s wife, Rosa, James has reportedly turned his attention to nurse Lena Franklin, earning the enmity of her swain, anesthetist David Meredith. Not to be outdone, Diane is having an affair with senior surgeon Maj. Peter Bright. When someone fires on the Robertsons’ house, everyone assumes that the communists were behind the suspiciously small-scale attack. Later, when James is found shot to death in his car outside The Dog, the civilian police and the army confer and agree that they may have to look amongst their own for suspects. Inexperienced Tom’s autopsy shows that James must have been killed elsewhere. Tempers run high, and suspicions extend even to the company commander, who seems to be losing his mind.
Knight (Grounds for Appeal, 2012, etc.) has based the case on his own experiences in Malaya in the 1950s. What it lacks in mystery is more than offset by the forensic and historical details of a little-known war in a faraway world.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8161-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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by Agatha Christie ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 28, 1934
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
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by Robert Goldsborough ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 19, 2020
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.
In Archie Goodwin's 15th adventure since the death of his creator, Rex Stout, his gossipy Aunt Edna Wainwright lures him from 34th Street to his carefully unnamed hometown in Ohio to investigate the death of a well-hated bank president.
Tom Blankenship, the local police chief, thinks there’s no case since Logan Mulgrew shot himself. But Archie’s mother, Marjorie Goodwin, and Aunt Edna know lots of people with reason to have killed him. Mulgrew drove rival banker Charles Purcell out of business, forcing Purcell to get work as an auto mechanic, and foreclosed on dairy farmer Harold Mapes’ spread. Lester Newman is convinced that Mulgrew murdered his ailing wife, Lester’s sister, so that he could romance her nurse, Carrie Yeager. And Donna Newman, Lester’s granddaughter, might have had an eye on her great-uncle’s substantial estate. Nor is Archie limited to mulling over his relatives’ gossip, for Trumpet reporter Verna Kay Padgett, whose apartment window was shot out the night her column raised questions about the alleged suicide, is perfectly willing to publish a floridly actionable summary of the leading suspects that delights her editor, shocks Archie, and infuriates everyone else. The one person missing is Archie’s boss, Nero Wolfe (Death of an Art Collector, 2019, etc.), and fans will breathe a sigh of relief when he appears at Marjorie’s door, debriefs Archie, notices a telltale clue, prepares dinner for everyone, sleeps on his discovery, and arranges a meeting of all parties in Marjorie’s living room in which he names the killer.
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5988-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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