Cummins’s case is perhaps too neatly tied to a deathbed scene at Max’s home. But one shouldn’t quibble when Todd (The Red...
Two years after the Great War ends, another, more personal war begins.
Retiring from the Yard, Chief Inspector Cummins confides in his protégé Ian Rutledge that an unsolved murder at Stonehenge has tormented him for years. But Rutledge is overwhelmed already. First his friend Max, consumed by war memories, commits suicide; then Rutledge is sent off to Eastfield, Sussex, to deal with three garrotings in nine days, each victim found with someone else’s wartime identity disc in his mouth. Many of the villagers suspect the absent brother of one of the victims, but the schoolmistress, vehemently defending him, asks the Yard to recall Rutledge for misbehavior. When his career adversary and replacement, Inspector Mickelson, is brutally attacked after identifying the wrong suspect, Rutledge is arrested for attempted murder. Ultimately released and reinstated, Rutledge, with help from Hamish, the ghost of the soldier he had to have executed in the war, zeroes in on another suspect, a former schoolmate of the garroting victims, now exacting revenge for years of bullying. Once a chance meeting with a past love, Meredith Channing, ends sadly, Rutledge heads for a French battlefield, his service revolver in his pocket and suicide on his mind. But better sense prevails, sending Rutledge back to Eastfield, where he can deal with the murders if he doesn’t become the next victim.
Cummins’s case is perhaps too neatly tied to a deathbed scene at Max’s home. But one shouldn’t quibble when Todd (The Red Door, 2009, etc.) so eloquently blasts war for the obscenity it is.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-172619-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2011
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
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.
In Archie Goodwin's 15th adventure since the death of his creator, Rex Stout, his gossipy Aunt Edna Wainwright lures him from 34th Street to his carefully unnamed hometown in Ohio to investigate the death of a well-hated bank president.
Tom Blankenship, the local police chief, thinks there’s no case since Logan Mulgrew shot himself. But Archie’s mother, Marjorie Goodwin, and Aunt Edna know lots of people with reason to have killed him. Mulgrew drove rival banker Charles Purcell out of business, forcing Purcell to get work as an auto mechanic, and foreclosed on dairy farmer Harold Mapes’ spread. Lester Newman is convinced that Mulgrew murdered his ailing wife, Lester’s sister, so that he could romance her nurse, Carrie Yeager. And Donna Newman, Lester’s granddaughter, might have had an eye on her great-uncle’s substantial estate. Nor is Archie limited to mulling over his relatives’ gossip, for Trumpet reporter Verna Kay Padgett, whose apartment window was shot out the night her column raised questions about the alleged suicide, is perfectly willing to publish a floridly actionable summary of the leading suspects that delights her editor, shocks Archie, and infuriates everyone else. The one person missing is Archie’s boss, Nero Wolfe (Death of an Art Collector, 2019, etc.), and fans will breathe a sigh of relief when he appears at Marjorie’s door, debriefs Archie, notices a telltale clue, prepares dinner for everyone, sleeps on his discovery, and arranges a meeting of all parties in Marjorie’s living room in which he names the killer.
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5988-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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