Not the best in Dunn’s long-running series (Superfluous Women, 2015, etc.), this one relies on period detail to charm fans...
An inveterate sleuth investigates a case of too many nannies.
Now that her husband, Scotland Yard detective Alec Fletcher, is out of town on a case and his daughter, Belinda, is home from school, Daisy Fletcher is playing host to Ben and Charlie, her cousin’s West Indian adoptees, whom she plans to show the sights of 1928 London. Their visit to the Crystal Palace includes Daisy’s twins, who are cared for by Nanny Gilpin and nursery maid Bertha; Daisy’s friend Sakari; and retired DS Tom Tring and his wife. Belinda and the boys are exploring on their own when they notice Nanny Gilpin following another nanny and decide to trail them. They catch up just in time to rescue Nanny Gilpin, whom they find floating in an ornamental lake. When Daisy goes searching for her missing nanny, she finds instead a dead nanny in a stall in the ladies’ room. Luckily, Tom Tring is on hand to help with the police. Daisy’s still wondering why the body looks familiar when the soaking wet children arrive to announce that Mrs. Gilpin needs help. Indeed she does: She has a head wound and no memory of what happened to her or why she was following the unknown nanny. The dead nanny turns out to be Teddy Devenish, a cousin of Daisy’s friend Lucy, Lady Gerald Bincombe. Unfortunately for the police, the young man about town had a bad reputation, and plenty of people would be glad to see him dead. Although she knows that neither Alec nor the police will be pleased, Daisy, who’s perfectly placed to mine information from her aristocratic friends, dives into the investigation and comes up with the clues that solve the case.
Not the best in Dunn’s long-running series (Superfluous Women, 2015, etc.), this one relies on period detail to charm fans of classic British mysteries.Pub Date: March 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-04705-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2018
Catchy title; too bad the psychothriller behind it—despite the publisher's big push—is a mostly routine tale of cop vs. serial-killer. And it's really too bad for Patterson (The Midnight Club, 1988, etc.) that William Diehl's new thriller, Primal Fear (reviewed above), covers some of the same territory with superior energy and skill. A few charms lift this above run-of-the-mill: Patterson's hero, D.C. psychologist/cop Alex Cross, is black, while his lover, Secret Service honcho Jezzie Flanagan, is white; and the narrative moves briskly by cutting between Cross's ambling account and a sharper third-person tracking, mostly of the killer's movements. He is Gary Soneji—a nobody living a deceptively quiet life as Gary "Murphy"—who has killed 200 people and now wants to commit the Crime of the Century and become Somebody: Soneji/Murphy snatches the daughter of a top actress and the son of the US secretary of the treasury. Enter Cross and Flanagan, whose bad luck at finding kids and kidnapper—who, taunting the cops, kills an FBI agent and gets away with a $10-million payoff, while one of the kids turns up dead—changes only when Soneji/Murphy, cracking up, holds hostage to a McDonald's and is wounded by a cop. Here, Patterson's tale begins to mirror Diehl's: Soneji/Murphy turns out to suffer from the same sensational psychosis as Diehl's villain; and in the ensuing trial, Soneji/Murphy's lawyer pursues a defense similar to that of Diehl's attorney-hero. But where Diehl's villain roars on the page, Soneji/Murphy barely smirks; and while Diehl's courtroom crackles with intelligence, Patterson's is almost transcript-dull. Patterson does wind up, however, with a fine noir twist. Cross is a likable hero, but with a watery plot and weak villain—Hannibal Lecter would eat Soneji for breakfast—he doesn't have much to work with here.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-316-69364-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A top-notch psychological thriller.
In Hoag’s (The 9th Girl, 2013, etc.) latest, talented young newscaster Dana Nolan is left to navigate a psychological maze after escaping a serial killer.
While recuperating at home in Shelby Mills, Indiana, Dana meets her former high school classmates John Villante and Tim Carver. Football hero Tim is ashamed of flunking out of West Point, and now he’s a sheriff’s deputy. After Iraq and Afghanistan tours, John’s home with PTSD, "angry and bitter and dark." Dana survived abduction by serial killer Doc Holiday, but she still suffers from the gruesome attack by "the man who ruined her life, destroyed her career, shattered her sense of self, damaged her brain and her face." What binds the trio is their friend Casey Grant, who's been missing five years, perhaps also a Holiday victim, even if "[t]he odds against that kind of coincidence had to be astronomical." Hoag’s first 100 pages are a gut-wrenching dissection of the aftereffects of traumatic brain injury: Dana is plagued by "[f]ear, panic, grief, and anger" and haunted by fractured memories and nightmares. "Before Dana had believed in the inherent good in people. After Dana knew firsthand their capacity for evil." Impulsive and paranoid, Dana obsesses over linking Casey’s disappearance to Holiday, with her misfiring brain convincing her that "finding the truth about what had happened to Casey [was] her chance of redemption." But then Hoag tosses suspects into the narrative faster than Dana can count: Roger Mercer, Dana’s self-absorbed state senator stepfather; Mack Villante, who left son John with "no memories of his father that didn’t include drunkenness and cruelty"; even Hardy, the hard-bitten, cancer-stricken detective who investigated Casey’s disappearance. Tense, tightly woven, with every minor character, from Dana’s fiercely protective aunt to Mercer’s pudgy campaign chief, ratcheting up the tension, Hoag’s narrative explodes with an unexpected but believable conclusion.
A top-notch psychological thriller.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-95454-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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