A layered, engaging murder tale that surprises on several levels.
In this seventh installment of a mystery series, Cincinnati’s favorite dog-loving sleuth confronts a cold case with a deep history.
A body has been discovered following the flooding of Mill Creek—an old one. A skeleton, in fact, dressed like Elvis Presley. Police detective Peter Dourson is dispatched to the scene, and he brings along his girlfriend, painter and occasional crime-solver Lia Anderson. Lia has just lost a beloved dog and acquired a mischievous puppy that is chewing up all of her furniture. The puppy isn’t the only new addition to her life: Peter’s chaotic ex-fiancee, Susan Sweeney, has appeared out of the blue in an attempt to win him back. Peter doesn’t have much hope of cracking the cold case—crimes like this one rarely get solved—but when a story about the Presley skeleton shows up in the National Enquirer, the police are pressured to come up with some real answers. What Lia and Peter don’t realize is that their John Doe is connected to a series of events stretching all the way back to the 1930s. With the aid of the not-always-helpful dog-park gang, can Lia solve a decades-old murder while making sure Susan doesn’t sabotage all that she has built with Peter? The novel takes place not only in the present, but also in flashbacks to the ’30s and ’40s, when the roots of skeleton Presley’s fate are planted. Newsome’s prose is urgent and textured in both sections, as here where she describes a stage magician in 1938: “Mal stood on the Trianon stage, smoking a cigarette while he polished the swords he used with his trick cabinet. It was a subtle thing to sell the act. The brilliant reflection of spotlights on the blades sent a message of deadly danger as he inserted them into the cabinet, drawing involuntary gasps from the audience.” The tale takes its time getting started, but it never bores thanks to the author’s ability to craft intriguing and endearing characters. The book is unexpectedly ambitious in its scope, expanding beyond the series’ usual canine-positive whodunits and into more literary terrain. The result is a story that should appeal to mystery fans and general fiction readers alike.
A layered, engaging murder tale that surprises on several levels.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-947085-05-3
Page Count: 460
Publisher: Two Pup Press
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.
When two women who share a birthday meet, a journalist becomes the subject of her own true-crime mystery.
On their 45th birthdays, Josie Fair and Alix Summer meet at a pub and discover they were born not only on the same day, but in the same hospital. Alix is a successful journalist, and Josie convinces Alix that her story is worth telling: Josie met her husband when she was 13 and he was 40. “I can see that maybe I was being used, that maybe I was even being groomed?” she confesses to Alix. “But that feeling of being powerful, right at the start, when I was still in control. I miss that sometimes. I really do. And what I’d like, more than anything, is to get it back.” From this premise Alix creates a Netflix series, Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin! which investigates Josie’s life as she reconciles what happened to her as a teen and seeks a new path. With the story unfinished, the narrative unfolds in the present tense, with prose that jingles like song lyrics: “He turns to see if the girl is behind him, and sees her wishy-washy, wavy-wavy, in double vision through the glass windows of the hotel.” Alix is both intrigued and repulsed by Josie, but she initially gives her the benefit of the doubt. After all, Alix’s husband, Nathan, has a drinking problem, and Alix knows what it’s like to be reluctant to leave a bad situation. But Josie seems more interested in being part of Alix’s seemingly glamorous life than she is in fixing her own, and when three people end up dead and Alix’s life is turned upside down, the evidence points to Josie—and turns the TV series into a murder mystery. Transcripts from Alix’s interviews alternate with the narrative, offering increasingly varied perspectives on Josie’s story as told by her neighbors, friends, and family members. With so many versions of events, the ending shatters, leaving readers to decide whose is the truth.
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781982179007
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.
When a man accused of rape turns up dead, an Early American town seeks justice amid rumors and controversy.
Lawhon’s fifth work of historical fiction is inspired by the true story and diaries of midwife Martha Ballard of Hallowell, Maine, a character she brings to life brilliantly here. As Martha tells her patient in an opening chapter set in 1789, “You need not fear….In all my years attending women in childbirth, I have never lost a mother.” This track record grows in numerous compelling scenes of labor and delivery, particularly one in which Martha has to clean up after the mistakes of a pompous doctor educated at Harvard, one of her nemeses in a town that roils with gossip and disrespect for women’s abilities. Supposedly, the only time a midwife can testify in court is regarding paternity when a woman gives birth out of wedlock—but Martha also takes the witness stand in the rape case against a dead man named Joshua Burgess and his living friend Col. Joseph North, whose role as judge in local court proceedings has made the victim, Rebecca Foster, reluctant to make her complaint public. Further complications are numerous: North has control over the Ballard family's lease on their property; Rebecca is carrying the child of one of her rapists; Martha’s son was seen fighting with Joshua Burgess on the day of his death. Lawhon weaves all this into a richly satisfying drama that moves suspensefully between childbed, courtroom, and the banks of the Kennebec River. The undimmed romance between 40-something Martha and her husband, Ephraim, adds a racy flair to the proceedings. Knowing how rare the quality of their relationship is sharpens the intensity of Martha’s gaze as she watches the romantic lives of her grown children unfold. As she did with Nancy Wake in Code Name Hélène (2020), Lawhon creates a stirring portrait of a real-life heroine and, as in all her books, includes an endnote with detailed background.
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780385546874
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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