The Darlings don’t work as a Tommy and Tuppence duo this time, but Annie’s fans will enjoy her moxie as she goes it alone.
Max Darling is jailed for murder, and his wife Annie (Death of the Party, 2005, etc.) goes undercover to prove his innocence.
When her investigator husband fails to come home one night, his wife, Death on Demand bookseller Annie Darling, frantically calls her mystery-loving confidants to help find him. But it’s the police who discover Max dirty, disorientated and clearly the prime suspect in the murder of sexy Vanessa Taylor. Max claims Vanessa hired him to find her brother, last seen in a seedy bar. But once they got there, Max was drugged. Now he has no recollection why his car, complete with bloody tire iron, would be found at the murder scene. While Max languishes in jail, Annie, pretending to be sent by Vanessa’s sister to pack her belongings, neatly inserts herself into the home of Vanessa’s wealthy employers, Lillian and Jon Dodd. She soon learns that Vanessa helped set up Max, unaware that the stratagem was a ploy to get rid of her before she caused trouble for one of three men: seemingly doting husband Jon Dodd; Kyle Curtis, brooding fiancé of Lillian’s daughter Heather; and next-door neighbor Sam Golden, married to a jealous alcoholic. Annie puts her life on the line to find the cold-hearted killer.
The Darlings don’t work as a Tommy and Tuppence duo this time, but Annie’s fans will enjoy her moxie as she goes it alone.Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-072402-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
Mystery and detection compete with a gorgeous swarm of supercharged personalities on their own wild rides.
Unlicensed, untrammeled, uncensored South Central shamus Isaiah Quintabe’s fourth case could be his toughest—and not because it’s so hard to figure out whodunit.
Nobody says no to arms dealer Angus Byrne, and he certainly doesn’t intend for IQ to be the first. So when East Long Beach’s premiere unofficial investigator, who’s been kidnapped and marched into the dealer’s presence after declining an earlier invitation from his goons, indicates in no uncertain terms that no, he’s not interested in clearing Angus’ daughter, custom tailor Christiana Byrne, from suspicion of shooting Tyler Barnes, Angus’ very best employee, Angus promptly turns up the heat, threatening to break the hand of IQ’s girlfriend, violinist Stella McDaniels, if Christiana is so much as arrested for murder. Not enough pressure for you? Well, IQ’s attachment to Stella is about to be seriously tested by the return of his lost love Grace Monarova, who took off for New Mexico with IQ’s dog in the wake of his last adventure (Wrecked, 2018). And Christiana turns out to be not one but five suspects, including homebody Pearl, seductive Marlene, adolescent Jasper, and guardian Bertrand, all fighting for attention and control inside Christiana’s tormented psyche. Figuring out which of the five personalities witnessed which events on the night of the murder and which of them can remember and describe anything about what really happened would be a tall order for any sleuth. But although he isn’t just any sleuth, IQ has to juggle a record number of subplots and distractions, from his buddy Thomas Kahill’s sudden yearning for true love to the maneuvering of Angus’ lieutenants for control of his arms empire to a series of increasingly intemperate skirmishes over a particular prize, a modern rendition of a Gatling gun.
Mystery and detection compete with a gorgeous swarm of supercharged personalities on their own wild rides.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-50953-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
A worthwhile thriller and a valuable exposé.
A CIA coverup slowly unravels.
In 1953, Dr. Charles Wilson either jumped or fell from a window of the Hotel Harrington. In 1975, at a Senate hearing, it was publicly revealed that he had been subjected to a CIA experiment involving LSD, but the fact that he had been a CIA employee and the details of his work for the agency went undiscovered. Internal records of the death were missing, and the director, himself unaware of the actual circumstances of Wilson's death, asks Jack Gabriel to investigate and report the real story if he can. Gabriel knew Wilson and that he worked in the germ warfare laboratories, and from that starting point he begins to explore the questions surrounding Wilson's death. As he works, potential witnesses die "accidentally," avenues of inquiry dry up, and a substantial coverup becomes apparent. Then an anonymous source offers a few tips, and Gabriel begins to understand the true extent of the CIA's crime: They murdered one of their own. There remain questions, though, and in the process of trying to assess who and why, Gabriel's own life becomes perilous. Overall, the novel's pace is a little slow and the plot one-dimensional, but the characters of Gabriel and his family and of Wilson's surviving family are vivid and sympathetic. Vidich (The Good Assassin, 2017, etc.) acknowledges that his novel is based on the story of Frank Olson, who "fell or jumped" from a New York City hotel room in November 1953, and fidelity to historical fact may account for the pace and plotting. But this fidelity also reveals a shameful instance of postwar conduct and the arrogance of the powerful.
A worthwhile thriller and a valuable exposé.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64313-335-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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