Expert prose, brisk pacing, and a complex plot. But what really makes this first of a series Edison’s (Frames Per Second,...
Having blotted his copybook, ex-DEA agent Jack Merchant is spending early retirement desultorily skippering his sloop Lila in and around the marinas of Charleston, Mass., looking forward to not much. His life is on hold: He knows it, hates it, seems stuck with it until the sudden entrance of repo woman Sarah Ballard, holder of past due “bank paper” on the Lila. Sarah and Jack are not strangers to each other. Five years after their paths crossed in a way that brought them close for a while, Sarah’s used the threat of repossession as an obvious pretext to engineer a reunion because she needs Jack’s help. Owner of a struggling business, she’s a make-or-break client with an assignment she fears might be too great a stretch. MassBank wants her to find bank VP Paul Baylor and his wife, a thoroughly respectable, well-heeled young couple who’ve made off in their boat, very possibly with a pile of MassBank cash. Get results in a week, Sarah’s been told, or consider yourself repo non grata. Teaming up efficiently, Sarah and Jack locate the Baylors, but that proves much easier than tangling with the spider they find at work, perverted, pernicious, poisonous, weaving his tangled web for the Baylors—and, as it turns out, for Sarah and Jack as well.
Expert prose, brisk pacing, and a complex plot. But what really makes this first of a series Edison’s (Frames Per Second, 1999, etc.) best yet are the flawed, hurt, exceptionally sympathetic central players.Pub Date: June 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-932112-11-1
Page Count: 312
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.
Too much free time leads a New Hampshire bookseller into yet another case of murder.
Now that Tricia Miles has Pixie Poe and Mr. Everett practically running her bookstore, Haven’t Got a Clue, she finds herself at loose ends. Her wealthy sister, Angelica, who in the guise of Nigela Ricita has invested heavily in making Stoneham a bookish tourist attraction, is entering the amateur competition for the Great Booktown Bake-Off. So Tricia, who’s recently taken up baking as a hobby, decides to join her and spends a lot of time looking for the perfect cupcake recipe. A visit to another bookstore leaves Tricia witnessing a nasty argument between owner Joyce Widman and next-door neighbor Vera Olson over the trimming of tree branches that hang over Joyce’s yard—also overheard by new town police officer Cindy Pearson. After Tricia accepts Joyce’s offer of some produce from her garden, they find Vera skewered by a pitchfork, and when Police Chief Grant Baker arrives, Joyce is his obvious suspect. Ever since Tricia moved to Stoneham, the homicide rate has skyrocketed (Poisoned Pages, 2018, etc.), and her history with Baker is fraught. She’s also become suspicious about the activities at Pets-A-Plenty, the animal shelter where Vera was a dedicated volunteer. Tricia’s offered her expertise to the board, but president Toby Kingston has been less than welcoming. With nothing but baking on her calendar, Tricia has plenty of time to investigate both the murder and her vague suspicions about the shelter. Plenty of small-town friendships and rivalries emerge in her quest for the truth.
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0272-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
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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