In this mystery series debut, Andi Battaglia conducts her first murder investigation for the Burgess Beach Police Department in Florida, uncovering the secrets of a volunteer group of wildlife supporters.
Andi is looking at the putrid body of retired botany professor Max Denman, the first death she has been called in on since joining the police force in Burgess Beach, Florida. She suspects that Denman, who friends say was sickly not long before he died, didn’t die of natural causes. Discovering that Denman, the night before, was one of the handful of museum volunteers who observed and protected sea turtles as the creatures laid eggs on the beach, she proceeds to interview the other members of the group. While all claim they didn’t know Denman prior to volunteering, some still seem shifty. Volunteer Mara Phillips, the shaky, alcoholic shop assistant now dating the museum’s sea turtle expert, ends up being connected to the Boston family that became the surprising beneficiary of Denman’s fortune. Scared that she’ll be charged with the crime, Mara conducts her own investigation and travels to Denman’s former university in Wisconsin. Andi continues her own detective work, which includes determining if a venture capital firm involved with Denman’s research might be behind the homicide. She also dodges calls from her married policeman lover back in Tampa, deals with her mother’s breast cancer surgery and becomes acquainted with an attractive new male colleague. Then another volunteer is slain, catapulting Andi and Mara into a dramatic showdown with the finally revealed killer. In this debut tale, novelist Sojka brings a wry eye to life in Florida. Her mystery has several good twists and turns, and some of the volunteers wrestle with rather amusing desperations, including having to battle the boredom of retirement. Andi has an enjoyable Columbo-like quality, asking matter-of-fact questions and then watching suspects squirm. While it’s a bit surprising that Mara rises to be a rather savvy sleuth, one hopes that she and Andi join forces in future adventures.
Promising launch of an appealing contemporary female detective series set in the Sunshine State.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499761276
Page Count: 322
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
