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
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
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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