A light, enjoyable escapist read with a satisfying final twist.
In Tichi’s fifth installment of her Gilded Age mystery series, murder and intrigue disrupt the usual upper-class frivolities in New York’s Hudson Valley.
In early June 1899 (the “between season” for those who follow the social calendar of the Gilded class), New Yorkers Roderick “Roddy” Windham DeVere and Valentine “Val” Louise Mackle DeVere prepare to enjoy Roddy’s newest creative cocktail when Val learns that they have been invited to Kiddwood, the Ulster County country estate of family friends Alfred “Alf” Kidd and Mercedes “Sadie” Kidd. The invitation includes a not-so-subtle request to discover the cause of Kiddwood’s recent water problems (their water flows from the adjacent undeveloped acreage owned by Roddy’s parents, and that flow has dwindled down to a trickle). Before Val can convince Roddy to send their polite regrets, a telegram arrives informing them that a woman’s body has been found on the DeVere property. Two days later, Roddy and Val take a Hudson River steamboat up to Kingston, New York, where they are to liaise with Assistant Police Chief Clyde Fitch. And so begins another murderous adventure through the Gilded Age, complete with all of its glamour and suffocating social conventions (as well as its gritty underbelly). Readers are likely to particularly enjoy the outrageously lavish displays of luxury relished by those living at the pinnacle of the economic heap, as meticulously described by Val, the story’s narrator. Indeed, the author pays attention to every detail of the clothing and cuisine, including the recipes for Roddy’s exotic cocktails (“My Roddy had just mixed one of his fabulous, mysterious drinks, this one called a Collins. We tapped our tall glasses and sipped. ‘Delicious, Roddy.’ I sipped again. ‘I taste orange, Florida orange. The name of this must be the Florida Collins’ ”). Although the tension is mild in this cozy mystery, there are plenty of juicy secrets behind the glittering facade and enough suspects to keep the reader guessing.
A light, enjoyable escapist read with a satisfying final twist.Pub Date: May 9, 2023
ISBN: 979-8985121667
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.
A sequel to The Grey Wolf (2024) that begins with the earlier novel’s last line: “We have a problem.” And what a problem it is.
Now that Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his allies in and out of the Sûreté du Québec have saved Canada’s water supply from poisoning on a grand scale, you might think they were entitled to some rest and relaxation in Three Pines. No such luck. Don Joseph Moretti, the Sixth Family head who ordered the hit-and-run on biologist Charles Langlois that nearly killed Gamache as well, is plotting still more criminal enterprises, and Gamache can’t be sure that Chief Inspector Evelyn Tardiff, who’s been cozying up to Moretti in order to get the goods on him, hasn’t gone over to the dark side herself. In fact, Gamache’s uncertainty about Evelyn sets the pattern for much of what follows, for another review of one of Langlois’ notebooks reveals a plot so monstrous that it’s impossible to be sure who’s not in on it. Is it really true, as paranoid online rumors have it, that “Canada is about to attack the U.S.”? Or is it really the other way around, as the discovery of War Plan Red would have it? As the threats loom larger and larger, they raise questions as to whether the Black Wolf, the evil power behind them, is Moretti, disgraced former Deputy Prime Minister Marcus Lauzon, whom Gamache has arranged to have released from prison, or someone even more highly placed. A brief introductory note dating Penny’s delivery of the uncannily prophetic manuscript to September 2024 will do little to assuage the anxieties of concerned readers.
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250328175
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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