A BEAUTIFUL CORPSE

Name: A BEAUTIFUL CORPSE
Author: Christi Daugherty
ISBN: 978-1-250-14887-2

by Christi Daugherty ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019

This first-rate adventure for Daugherty’s heroine is fast-paced, intriguing, and romantic. A message from her stalker...

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A crime reporter who’s still obsessed with the long-ago murder of her mother faces more present-day murder.

One reason Harper McClain became a crime reporter for a Savannah newspaper was her excellent relationship with the police. That ended when she took down the man who was like a father to her, the former homicide chief who's now doing time for murder (The Echo Killing, 2018). As a result, most of the cops shun her and make her life miserable, and her romantic relationship with homicide detective Luke Walker has been shattered. A new murder case plunges Harper back into all the bad memories. Harper’s bestie, Bonnie Larson, works at the Library bar along with beautiful law student Naomi Scott, who leaves early on a quiet night. A call from Harper’s photographer, Miles Jackson, sends her racing to River Street, the heart of the tourist area, which has become a murder scene. She's devastated to see that the body is Naomi's. The police fasten on her boyfriend, Wilson Shepherd, but Naomi’s father insists on Wilson’s innocence. Detective Julie Daltrey, who’s caught the case, grudgingly gives Harper enough information to get her started on a story that could turn into a blockbuster. Meantime, Harper has other problems to spare. Someone’s gotten into her apartment despite all her security measures, and she constantly feels that she’s being followed. The case does get her back in touch with Luke, and the passion they shared flares again. The police, unable to develop enough evidence to hold Wilson, begin looking at Naomi’s boss and a fellow law student she dated and then began to fear. Although Harper worries about her stalker, she doesn’t see the danger coming from both past and present.

This first-rate adventure for Daugherty’s heroine is fast-paced, intriguing, and romantic. A message from her stalker intimates her next adventure will be just as exciting.

Pub Date: March 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-250-14887-2

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Minotaur

Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
REVOLVER ROAD
by Christi Daugherty

- BOOK REVIEW
THE ECHO KILLING
by Christi Daugherty

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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.