CRYSTAL DEATH

Name: CRYSTAL DEATH
Author: Charles Kipps
ISBN: 978-1-4391-3995-0

by Charles Kipps ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2010

Kipps (Hell’s Kitchen Homicide, 2009, etc.) pairs his genuinely original protagonist with a cheeky, charming partner. The...

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Conor Bard, the NYPD’s singing detective, makes a second page-turning appearance in the case of the blood-red diamond.

Diamonds were not Zivah Gavish’s best friend. Her elegant throat cut, she’s discovered in her sumptuous New York apartment, the fabulous red gem that had been in her custody gone with her murderer. The well-known, well-liked, extremely successful dealer was also young and beautiful, and as Conor looks down at her lovely, lifeless body, he finds it difficult to maintain the detachment other veteran cops manage so routinely. “Because I’m not really a cop,” he tells himself dismissively. “I’m a musician.” Forty-something Conor, in possession of a been-there, bluesy baritone that audiences—particularly females—respond to, has demonstrated a first-rate sleuth’s willingness to think outside the box. Clues and suspects abound, as does pressure from the NYPD brass to crack the case yesterday. Stepping up the pressure is Conor’s new and inexperienced partner, who’s confronted with her first big-time homicide. Lieutenant Rooney thinks that more seasoned help is called for. But Conor likes sharp-tongued Rosita Rubio. He thinks she’s bright and resourceful and a good fit for him professionally. And she certainly is eye candy.

Kipps (Hell’s Kitchen Homicide, 2009, etc.) pairs his genuinely original protagonist with a cheeky, charming partner. The results are refreshing.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010

ISBN: 978-1-4391-3995-0

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: July 13, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010

Categories:

MYSTERY & DETECTIVE

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

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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

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
EVIL BONES
by Kathy Reichs

- BOOK REVIEW
FIRE AND BONES
by Kathy Reichs

- BOOK REVIEW
COLD, COLD BONES
by Kathy Reichs

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THREE BAGS FULL

A SHEEP DETECTIVE STORY

by Leonie Swann & translated by Anthea Bell ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 5, 2007

All these problems are handsomely solved at the unsurprising cost of making the human characters less interesting than the...

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Just when you thought you’d seen a detective in every guise imaginable, here comes one in sheep’s clothing.

For years, George Glenn hasn’t been close to anyone but his sheep. Everyday he lets them out, pastures them, reads to them and brings them safely back home to his barn in the guilelessly named Irish village of Glennkill. Now George lies dead, pinned to the ground by a spade. Although his flock haven’t had much experience with this sort of thing, they’re determined to bring his killer to justice. There are of course several obstacles, and debut novelist Swann deals with them in appealingly matter-of-fact terms. Sheep can’t talk to people; they can only listen in on conversations between George’s widow Kate and Bible-basher Beth Jameson. Not even the smartest of them, Othello, Miss Maple (!) and Mopple the Whale, can understand much of what the neighborhood priest is talking about, except that his name is evidently God. They’re afraid to confront suspects like butcher Abraham Rackham and Gabriel O’Rourke, the Gaelic-speaking charmer who’s raising a flock for slaughter. And even after a series of providential discoveries and brainwaves reveals the answer to the riddle, they don’t know how to tell the Glennkill citizenry.

All these problems are handsomely solved at the unsurprising cost of making the human characters less interesting than the sheep. But the sustained tone of straight-faced wonderment is magical.