A fun beach read with a bit of tension and enjoyable, biting social commentary.
The specter of death once again hovers over Val and Roddy DeVere in the seventh volume of Tichi’s Gilded Age mystery series.
It is the middle of the summer season of 1899 in Newport, Rhode Island. Society’s elites are enjoying their annual festivities, away from the heat of New York City and Boston. Valentine (Val) Louise Mackle, daughter of an Irish immigrant who made a fortune in silver mining, and Roderick (Roddy) Windham DeVere, scion of Manhattan’s upper-crust Knickerbocker crowd, have been married for almost four years, but society has yet to completely accept the veteran of Colorado mining camps as one of their own. Still recuperating from the couple’s last, almost fatal adventure, Val attends a grand event with trepidation. Her forebodings are validated when the couple meets with the host of the celebration, their friend Theodore (Theo) Bulkeley, who indicates that he has family troubles before he mysteriously disappears. The DeVeres receive a telegram: “Please Help. Reply Manhattan Club. Theo.” The next day, they depart Newport and head for their New York home. When they rendezvous with Theo, Val and Roddy learn that he believes that the ostensibly accidental death of his beloved cousin Judith Winthipp was in fact due to murder, and he fears her twin sister Phoebe will be the next to meet a violent end. Although the adventurous murder mystery is intriguing and full of twists and turns, it is Val’s (Tichi’s narrator) delightfully acerbic descriptions of the upper class’ strictly proscribed excesses and constraints that propel the narrative. Roddy, an attorney by profession, is a charming amateur cocktail mixologist who creates tempting new beverages; following the series’ tradition, recipes for each of his latest concoctions (which are in great demand in the era’s finer restaurants and watering holes) pop up throughout the novel. There are also plenty of compelling historical tidbits and abundant details about the development of Manhattan’s Upper West Side luxury apartments around the turn of the century, with the Dakota and its many accoutrements prominently featured in the story.
A fun beach read with a bit of tension and enjoyable, biting social commentary.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9789695592946
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.
Lt. Eve Dallas’ 63rd futuristic case is less a whodunit than a manhunt for an unusually sympathetic killer.
Thirteen years ago, way back in 2048, scientific genius Steve Redman—father of the Banner-Wyst corporation’s Rainmaker Project—narrowly escaped death in a gas explosion that killed his pregnant wife and infant son and 200 other residents of their New York City apartment building the night before he planned to report his suspicions about the company to the FBI. Now the bill is coming due for Banner-Wyst. The first death to be discovered is that of Lawrence Chu, Redman’s colleague and trusted friend, whose tenure as director of bioengineering science ends when he’s beaten to death. For quite a while, Dallas and her partner, Det. Delia Peabody, know less about this mystery than their readers do. But when Ezra Dent, a consultant to Banner-Wyst who worked with Redman and Chu back in the day, is murdered in exactly the same ferocious way, Dallas and Peabody, with help from Roarke, Dallas’ tech-billionaire husband, promptly put the pieces together and determine who they’re looking for. The search for Redman, who went AWOL from his hospital bed without a trace six years ago, has its own challenges. So does Dallas’ attempt to get cooperation from partners Calvin Banner and Jacob Wyst, who are clearly in the crosshairs of a killer who seems a lot less monstrous than they are. If the breaks in the case are suspiciously convenient in arriving, readers can pride themselves on taking sides against a mega-corporation whose self-avowed ecological saintliness is undermined by its leaders’ underhanded dealing.
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414564
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.
It takes a quirky sleuth to solve a baffling closed-door murder.
The author himself or, more accurately, some version of him, walks the reader through a “gruesome murder” that occurred in a rural farming village. At the center of the crime is the wealthy Ichiyanagi family, including the widow Itoko and her five children. The “heinous crime” occurs in the evening after the festive wedding of eldest son Kenzo to schoolteacher Katsuko. Yokomizo, part narrator and part raconteur, liberally shares digressions such as the fact that his favorite British author is A.A. Milne, who wrote The Red House Mystery as well as the books about Winnie-the-Pooh. Written in 1946 but set in 1937 before the devastation of World War II, this is the first novel featuring Kosuke Kindaichi, the legendary detective who appeared in more than 70 stories by Yokomizo. If Yokomizo is the Japanese Agatha Christie, Kindaichi may seem the Japanese Hercule Poirot—although actually, given his unkempt hair and apparently distracted manner, he’s more a cross between Poirot and Columbo. Shrewdly, his entrance is delayed until midway through the novel, after the police have stalled and both the family and the reader are anxious for a solution. The narrator’s garrulous charm, in a mystery long on logistics and forensic clues but short on detailed character portraits or extended interactions, is a key to the novel’s success, leavening the more intricate pieces of the puzzle. Armchair detectives will welcome the helpful character list that precedes the story.
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781805336549
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
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