A highly readable whodunit that’s well grounded in social issues.
A gay Latino writer turns detective when a series of apparent hate crimes rocks his small town in VanPatten’s mystery.
Aspiring middle-aged novelist Will Christian is pedaling hard on his daily cardio bike ride in the fictional town of Mañana in California’s fertile Central Valley when he comes across a flock of vultures devouring a large carcass. He queasily recognizes a human hand rising from the remains, which are soon identified as those of 22-year-old Sergio Ramirez; like Will, he’s gay and Latino, and Will’s writerly curiosity kicks in as he begins to wonder if the man’s death could be a hate crime. His week is made even more eventful when he meets José Torres, a handsome grocery store worker who seems to be his perfect romantic match, while out shopping. Will’s fascination with the murder mystery is heightened when the body of another handsome, young, gay Latino man is found; at the same time, Will remains troubled by a memory of his high school friend, who may also have been killed for being gay and Latino. But as Will finds himself drawn further into the investigation, asking locals for help and pursuing potential leads with a dating app, he could become the killer’s next target. VanPatten presents an affable and relatable amateur detective in Will, and the story immediately draws readers in by placing the gruesome discovery of the first body in the opening paragraphs. Will’s immediate attention to the possible racial aspect of the crime and the account of his first meeting with José have a feeling of authenticity, as does the men’s encounter with a local homophobe. However, some readers may wish that the author had explored some facets of the narrative more deeply, such as the history of Will’s close relationship with his lesbian sister. The story has some lighter moments, but the story also presents a keen exploration of American racism, which, as Will says, “coursed through this country’s veins like cheap vodka in a drunk’s bloodstream.”
A highly readable whodunit that’s well grounded in social issues.Pub Date: July 8, 2021
ISBN: 979-8737025731
Page Count: 345
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
The heroine’s 62nd appearance is a hit-or-miss mystery best suited for readers already invested in her complicated life.
Lt. Eve Dallas is sucked into a murder that may well be overshadowed by another crime—and by the news that Roarke, her billionaire husband, is implicated in both felonies in an unexpected and troubling way.
Disturbed from her sleep, Aileen Carville arises to discover her wealthy husband, Nathan Barrister, coshed to death by a heavy amethyst from the collection of his late father, Zip Global founder Henry J. Barrister. His corpse is lying outside an open vault that everyone in the family insists they hadn’t known about until a couple of months ago, and it’s filled with priceless paintings and sculptures and jewels taken years ago from an A-list of museums, one of which—the Royal Suite, a legendary emerald setting—has evidently been stolen once again. The bombshell revelation that Henry must have commissioned the thefts himself leads to two questions—how did the thief who killed Nathan know about the vault and its contents, and what possessed Nathan’s wealthy father to steal and hide all these goodies in the first place?—that are much more interesting than whodunit, though only one of them will be satisfactorily answered. Another bombshell revelation follows: Roarke’s confession to Dallas that he stole the Royal Suite from London’s Tate Gallery when he was still a teenager, years before he turned away from a life of crime himself. Since Interpol is much more interested in the theft than the murder, there’s a real danger that they’ll decide Roarke was once again the thief. So, Dallas faces the double challenge of solving the crimes and keeping her beloved husband out of the frame.
The heroine’s 62nd appearance is a hit-or-miss mystery best suited for readers already invested in her complicated life.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414526
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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