An incisive novel by the queen of character-driven procedurals.
An unflinching look at the dangerous effects of the malicious gossip spread by social media.
DCI Anderson and DI Costello of Police Scotland have caught the case of medical student Aasha Ariti, who was found floating in the Firth of Clyde. She was last seen leaving a pub with another student who’d once complained online about "Asians buying themselves places at Scottish universities." So Aasha’s companion is accused of prejudice and possibly murder. Costello, who’s been shopping for her elderly neighbor in the time of Covid, finds the woman unconscious and calls an ambulance; she's later accused by a daughter the neighbor never mentioned of stealing a large sum of money from her mother's flat. Anderson must deal with the trauma of having his beloved dog put down. The pair are astounded when they’re suddenly taken off Aasha’s case to investigate the murder and mutilation of an old man found sitting in a chair in his own attic, facing the frozen movie image of a naked toddler. The deceased, who was using a false name, is identified as one of the Peacocks, three friends who danced in the clubs of the late 1950s along with Birdie Summer, who dated one but married another of them. Anderson and Costello, who smell something political and dangerous in this ice-cold case, must deal with rumors of pedophilia that only complicate their task.
An incisive novel by the queen of character-driven procedurals.Pub Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7278-9075-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
Armstrong’s new twist on her Rockton franchise scores higher as wilderness adventure than as mystery.
The idealistic attempt to carve a new town out of the Yukon snow runs into criminal complications that threaten to reduce the tiny population to zero.
Det. Casey Butler has every reason to be deeply invested in Haven’s Rock. She and her husband, Rockton Sheriff Eric Dalton, have financed the new settlement, breaking away from the marginally more established refuge of Rockton, with money Casey inherited. Her eventful history with Rockton makes her eager for the new town, whose every resident will be hand-picked by Dalton and her, to succeed. So she’s alarmed to learn that three of those residents ignored the place’s paramount rule—don’t go into the forest—and only one of them returned. Yolanda the contractor, last spotted walking into the woods with Bruno the engineer, is back safe and sound, but finding Bruno will become the top priority of Casey and Dalton and their canine and human cohort. Soon after he’s rescued, Bruno goes AWOL from his hospital bed without more than hinting at what happened in the forest, and this time he turns up dead. Even worse, Penny, the architect who followed Yolanda and Bruno when she first saw them walking away from the town in progress, remains missing, presumed dead—until Casey and Dalton find a dead woman who turns out to be Denise, the second wife of Mark, a prospective resident who’s on a secret mission of his own. Few readers will be able to name any of the suspects an hour after putting this spinoff down, but they’ll still be shivering with cold.
Armstrong’s new twist on her Rockton franchise scores higher as wilderness adventure than as mystery.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2023
ISBN: 9781250865410
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
Though Meyer ends by identifying himself as a forger, a generation of readers will be ever grateful for his efforts.
First, the bad news: In his closing acknowledgments, Meyer, dropping his pose as Dr. John H. Watson’s editor, announces: “I’m thinking this will be my last Holmes novel.”
Now, the other news, which is mostly excellent except for Rupert Milestone, the portrait painter who hasn’t paid the rent for his Notting Hill studio for three months. His landlady, recently widowed Lady Vera Glendenning, engages Holmes to find him, but the trail has gone cold—though not as cold as the body the Metropolitan Police eventually discover in a location as gruesome as it is unoriginal. In life, Milestone seems to have been an immensely gifted mimic who could copy the styles of masters old and new while displaying precious little originality of his own. The news that he was also a restorer who worked for fearsomely dominant art dealer Sir Jonathan Van Dam, Lord Southbank, poses questions about the relations between the paintings he restored and those he created. Calling on Juliet Packwood, the niece of Milestone’s dealer (and the daughter of Watson’s late comrade-in-arms Col. John Packwood), and Signor Garibaldi, Van Dam’s authenticator, leads Watson to a theory of the case and an amatory attachment that may compromise his deductions. At length, Holmes, more disinterested, more analytical, and able to see more complications beneath the obvious solution, leads Watson and the Met to a denouement as surprising and fulfilling as any in the sacred scriptures themselves. The whole exercise is adorned with the usual footnotes and an increasingly pointed and self-reflexive series of discussions about copies, forgeries, and the “real thing.”
Though Meyer ends by identifying himself as a forger, a generation of readers will be ever grateful for his efforts.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9781613166567
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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