Nondescript suspects, scant clues, and a heroine who’s not easy to like. Great weather, though.
Doyle throws a fashionable, high-maintenance Manhattan editor into a publicity job on a fictional Caribbean island. You’d never guess what happens next.
Tossed out of her job at Travel and Respite Magazine minutes after she’s fired artistic director Gerald Hand, Plum Lockhart, unable to find anything worthy of her gifts or salary demands near home, deigns to accept an offer from Jonathan Mayhew she’d originally scorned: to run the publicity department (read: hawk the properties) for his villa rental agency headquartered in Las Frutas Resort on sunny Paraiso. The expectations on both sides are utterly unreasonable, and neither of Jonathan’s other staffers, rival agent Damián Rodriguez or office manager Lucia, is much help. Despite repeated warnings from Lucia to honor Jonathan’s edict and rent each villa to a single family, Plum, desperate to make her mark, rents a place to Jason Manger, who’s about to be married, and his two groomsmen, Deepak Gupta and Nicholas Macpherson. The next morning, Macpherson’s found dead outside the villa—and to add insult to injury, he’s not even the same person who identified himself as Macpherson when he picked up the keys. Luckily, Plum has had the foresight to drink herself into an uncharacteristically unbuttoned meet-cute with Las Frutas security chief Juan Kevin Muñoz shortly before she needed his professional services. Since Capt. Diaz of the local police stolidly maintains that “nothing sinister happens in Paraiso,” it falls to Plum and Juan Kevin to sort out the modest mystery en route to rehabilitating Plum’s professional reputation.
Nondescript suspects, scant clues, and a heroine who’s not easy to like. Great weather, though.Pub Date: June 29, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-72823-233-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”
Idyllic Catalina Island turns out to be just as crime infested as the rest of Los Angeles County in the latest series launch by the creator of Harry Bosch, Renée Ballard, and the Lincoln Lawyer.
Det. Sgt. Stilwell has been bounced off the county homicide squad and rusticized to Catalina, where the exclusive Black Marlin Club won’t admit even four-term Avalon Mayor Doug Allen to full membership and the most serious infraction seems to be the killing and cutting up of a buffalo, presumably by Henry Gaston, who operates Island Mystery Tours when he’s not threatening endangered species. All that changes with the discovery of a body sunk in the surrounding waters. The corpse, most recognizable by its streak of purple hair, is that of Leigh-Anne Moss, a Black Marlin server recently fired for fraternizing with members and guests she sees as potential sugar daddies. Stilwell is sufficiently invested in her murder to compete vigorously over jurisdiction with Rex Ahearn, the LA County homicide detective who kept his job when Stilwell lost his. Their rivalry, fueled by mutual contempt, is only the first hint that Stilwell will end up fighting his counterparts in law enforcement and local government at least as hard as he fights crooks like hit man Merris Spivak and Oscar “Baby Head” Terranova, Henry’s boss, who comes under sharper scrutiny when Henry disappears and ends up dead himself. Connelly handles his hero’s obligatory romance with assistant harbormaster Tash Dano and his increasingly wary alliance with assistant D.A. Monika Juarez with equal professionalism, and if the wrap-up leaves some loose ends dangling, well, that’s what franchises are for.
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780316588485
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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