An enjoyable, complexly plotted series installment that promises more mysteries and thrills to come.
In this novel, a young sleuth participates in a mystery marathon that feels like a game of Clue, inviting readers to test their skills.
A mysterious package arrives that invites college student Sara Donovan to a gathering at a sumptuous country estate that offers megabucks to the winner of a contest. The nine participants must find and then figure out a series of clues, the victor being the first to do so. For help, Sara has her math genius brother, Matt; her faithful dachshund, Mauzzy; and her best friend, the spirited Zoe Harp. Readers also meet Sara’s boss in her side job as an office/research assistant, Melvin “Finn” Finnegan, a private investigator who is a lot smarter than he lets on, and the very mysterious Sadie Majelski, whose guise as a twinkly older woman hides formidable talents and secrets. Game on. Some participants drop out and at least one is murdered, but Sara and Zoe doggedly press on, cracking both safes and the enigmatic messages they find inside. They finally suss out who is behind the whole thing, an evil genius who is jealous of Sara’s growing reputation. But the mastermind gives the cops the slip and will remain a lethal adversary. Keep in mind that this is the third installment of a mystery series, so up pops Majelski at the end to hint at unfinished business. Polcari is clearly having a ball here, in what is in most ways typical fare: the likable, if frazzled, hero; her smart-mouthed but loyal sidekick; and the nerdy math whiz for backup. The author is a lively writer, as when, after a stressful weekend, Sara rejoices that “Monday finally got off its butt and decided to show up.” There are lots of unnerving, shady characters to speculate about, even better than Colonel Mustard, Professor Plum, and their cohorts. But there is a busyness to the plot (it just keeps shoveling in more clues and twists) that can be overwhelming. The puzzling out of the clues can sometimes seem overdrawn and repetitive, at least for those not into numerology games. But for those who are, this will be grand fun.
An enjoyable, complexly plotted series installment that promises more mysteries and thrills to come.Pub Date: June 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781509261420
Page Count: 414
Publisher: Wild Rose Press
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.
Someone is stalking the streets of Lt. Eve Dallas’s New York, intent on bringing new life to sex workers by snuffing out their old ones.
In 2061, prostitutes are called licensed companions, and that’s Leesa Culver’s job description when she’s accosted by a plausible-looking artist who wants to hire her as a model for the night. Before the night is over, she’s been drugged, strangled, costumed, and posed as an uncanny replica of Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring. The shock of the crime is deepened by the murder the following night of licensed companion Bobby Ren, whose body is discovered at an art gallery entrance costumed and posed as Gainsborough’s Blue Boy. The killer clearly has an obsessive agenda, a rapid-fire timetable, and access to unlimited financial resources that have allowed him to commission expensive custom-made outfits for the victims. This last detail both marks his power and points to the way Dallas, her gazillionaire husband, Roarke, and her sidekick, Det. Delia Peabody, will track him down by methodically narrowing the field of consumers who’ve purchased the costly costumes. After identifying the guilty party two-thirds of the way through the story, they’ll still face an uphill battle convicting a killer with no conscience, no respect for the law, and a budget that would easily cover the means to jump bail, remove his ankle tracker, and hire a private jet to escape to a foreign land with no extradition treaty. Robb keeps it all consistently absorbing by sweating every procedural detail along with her heroine. Only Dallas’ climactic interrogation of her prisoner is a letdown, because it’s perfectly obvious how she’s going to wangle a confession out of him.
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370822
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
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