A late-blooming Golden Age gem that fully lives up to its title.
Inspector Cockrill’s last novel-length case, first published in 1955, takes him on a package tour to San Juan el Pirata, a Mediterranean island paradise of sun, sand, and murder.
Cockie’s companions include irresistible Louli Barker, who clings helplessly to him as their airplane begins its descent; Cecil Prout, of the fashion house Christophe et Cie; Leo Rodd, forced out of his career as a concert pianist by the loss of his right arm; Helen Rodd, the wealthy wife who continues to support him; spinster Edith Trapp, whose wardrobe Mr. Cecil openly admires; introverted Vanda Lane, who enjoys gaining power over other people; and Odyssey Tours guide Fernando Gomez. Soon after their arrival, Vanda is stabbed to death in her hotel room as everyone else lounges on the beach, their alibis attested by the watchful Cockie himself, though they can’t extend the same courtesy to him. The investigation demanded and at first directed by El Exaltida, the suavely tyrannical Grand Duke of San Juan el Pirata, who’s determined to arrest one of the interlopers, reveals that every one of the vacationers is harboring some dark secret ranging from adultery to masquerade to embezzlement. Fending off his own arrest, Cockie eventually figures out which of those secrets is most toxic en route to half a dozen false climaxes and a remarkably well-timed unmasking. Along the way, Brand (1907-88) distributes puzzle pieces as dexterously as a Las Vegas dealer and wisely springs her biggest and most jaw-dropping surprise halfway through in order to give dazed readers plenty of time to accommodate themselves to its messy implications.
A late-blooming Golden Age gem that fully lives up to its title.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781464237676
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
The best news: The year goes on long enough for the hero to be reinstated. Whew!
Maine game warden Mike Bowditch’s 34th year proves to be his most eventful ever.
It begins when Mike, newly demoted from investigator, sees flames half a mile away and rushes into a burning house, where he’s too late to rescue Jenna Malloy or her husband, gym owner Brian. The only survivor is a baby girl Mike finds in the arms of a neighbor, Karen Kershaw. Waldo County Sheriff’s Deputy Chet Bessel’s reaction to the tragedy tells Mike the deaths won’t be widely mourned. They’re not the only ones that won’t. Soon afterward, the discovery of Axl Deming’s body on the railroad tracks suggests that whoever killed the presumed rapist and murderer of teenager Emily Crockett is bent on vigilante justice. Since the victims are “two of the most hated people in Maine—three if you count Jenna Malloy,” suspects would seem to be everywhere. Mike, repeatedly warned off the case because he’s no longer an investigator, can’t resist focusing on Karen Kershaw, who fled the scene while he was questioning her, and Edward Gudgeon, a scallop diver who frequented the same bar as Axl and his ex-con brother, Shayn. Mike’s on the right track, but his quest will take a twisty route through many more ambushes, confrontations, brushes with fellow law officers who end up suspending him, and threats to his wife, EMT Stacey Stevens, and their newborn son, Charles. Doiron tightens this web with an insistent mastery that will keep most readers from noticing just how far-reaching it is until they’ve gained the end and can take some deep, cleansing breaths.
The best news: The year goes on long enough for the hero to be reinstated. Whew!Pub Date: June 30, 2026
ISBN: 9781250864451
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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