An ambitious novel set in a richly imagined world but impeded by its glacial pace.
A sci-fi mystery involving robots and revolutionaries.
Lady Marianella Luna is a rich, beautiful woman with a problem, one she can’t bring to the cops. Instead, she takes her dilemma to a private eye, Eliana Gomez. Eliana eagerly accepts Lady Luna’s case—and her money—and begins chasing clues into the city’s underbelly. From this familiar opening, Clarke invites readers into an uncommon place: Hope City, an improbable metropolis built on the Antarctic ice and kept alive by a protective glass dome. In this alternate Earth, Hope City began as a Victorian-era amusement park, staffed by humans who immigrated to Antarctica as well as androids built for the park. The park closed in the 1940s and deactivated most of its androids, but the city endured. Now many citizens want to move back to the mainland, including Eliana: solving Lady Luna’s case will give her the funds to leave. Luna’s mystery quickly deepens, introducing Eliana to the city’s different elements (including gangsters and an Antarctic separatist movement) and to Sofia, an android that’s surreptitiously broken free from human control. The novel’s worldbuilding is phenomenal: Hope City’s past and present unfold effortlessly. At the same time, its female characters are particularly well-rendered: Eliana and Lady Luna forge a tentative friendship that feels real, while Sofia’s story is a refreshing take on whether an android should love or hate the humans around her. Unfortunately, what should have been a thrilling tale of detective work and sentient robots is dragged down by an unbearably lethargic narrative. Although each subplot is ingenious, the story lumbers from one story arc to another—conversations are drawn out for pages on end, characters examine their every passing thought—perhaps leading readers to feel they, too, are trapped in ice.
An ambitious novel set in a richly imagined world but impeded by its glacial pace.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4814-4426-2
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.
Too much free time leads a New Hampshire bookseller into yet another case of murder.
Now that Tricia Miles has Pixie Poe and Mr. Everett practically running her bookstore, Haven’t Got a Clue, she finds herself at loose ends. Her wealthy sister, Angelica, who in the guise of Nigela Ricita has invested heavily in making Stoneham a bookish tourist attraction, is entering the amateur competition for the Great Booktown Bake-Off. So Tricia, who’s recently taken up baking as a hobby, decides to join her and spends a lot of time looking for the perfect cupcake recipe. A visit to another bookstore leaves Tricia witnessing a nasty argument between owner Joyce Widman and next-door neighbor Vera Olson over the trimming of tree branches that hang over Joyce’s yard—also overheard by new town police officer Cindy Pearson. After Tricia accepts Joyce’s offer of some produce from her garden, they find Vera skewered by a pitchfork, and when Police Chief Grant Baker arrives, Joyce is his obvious suspect. Ever since Tricia moved to Stoneham, the homicide rate has skyrocketed (Poisoned Pages, 2018, etc.), and her history with Baker is fraught. She’s also become suspicious about the activities at Pets-A-Plenty, the animal shelter where Vera was a dedicated volunteer. Tricia’s offered her expertise to the board, but president Toby Kingston has been less than welcoming. With nothing but baking on her calendar, Tricia has plenty of time to investigate both the murder and her vague suspicions about the shelter. Plenty of small-town friendships and rivalries emerge in her quest for the truth.
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0272-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
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