Another case for Montoya (The Bone Fire, 2010, etc.) that’s rife with historical tidbits, garish deaths, back stories of the...
The victims have two things in common: proximity to a movie set and a biotech lab at Los Alamos.
It doesn’t get much grislier than this: One corpse has the severed penis of the other in his mouth, and both have knife wounds, bullets in the brain and abundant signs that they’ve been brutalized while duct-taped to chairs. The third victim met a slightly different fate. He was dangled from a ceiling plant hanger, then doused with gasoline to start the house fire that brought rescue squads, EMT volunteer Lucy Newroe and, finally, Santa Fe police detective Gil Montoya to the scene. The seated bodies belong to Drs. Price and Jacobson, a gay couple with ties to the film industry and the Primary Structural Biosystems department at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Genetics mark the dangler as a descendant of the Crypto-Jews who fled Spain for New Mexico centuries ago, pretending to be of the Catholic faith. A second arson sends another Los Alamos scientist to the hospital, while yet another home invasion sends a retired lab employee’s husband to the surgery ward. Fortuitous snooping by the newly sober Lucy, dogged police work by Gil and his assistants Kristen and Joe, and determined plotting by the author reveal a gang of four perps whose number quickly diminishes to one when its leader decides that he doesn’t need his pals anymore. The weather turns bleaker; snowdrifts impede the final chase scene; and it’s not until the spring thaw that one last body is found, although it doesn’t belong to the guy Montoya was hounding.
Another case for Montoya (The Bone Fire, 2010, etc.) that’s rife with historical tidbits, garish deaths, back stories of the police staff and a love for Santa Fe. If only the author would concentrate a little more on sensible plotting.Pub Date: April 16, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-250-00472-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A budding romance and an age-old motive combine in a heartwarming cozy.
A small-town businesswoman’s sleuthing marks her for death.
Winona Mae Montgomery saved her Granny Smythe’s apple orchard from ruin by building a thriving cider and event business in Blossom Valley, West Virginia. She’s receiving praise, and a hefty check, for throwing together a fabulous wedding reception for Elsie Sawyer and Jack Warren when the party's happy mood turns sour. The bride seems angry, the groom tipsy, and Winnie’s heartbreaking ex-boyfriend Hank Donovan’s interested in making out with a bridesmaid. But these minor glitches pale when the groom is found dead under the truck with "Just Married" on the window after having had words with Hank. Winnie developed a relationship with Sheriff Colton Wise in her last brush with murder (Apple Cider Slaying, 2019). Although he’s willing to listen to her ideas, he warns her off the case, a warning she ignores since Hank is a prime suspect. The best man, Aaron, had the key to the truck, but even after it turns up in the visor, Winnie keeps him on her list of suspects, along with the bride and the bridesmaid, who’s made herself scarce. After Hank’s sister, Gina, begs Winnie for help, they discover a bunch of flirty emails from Sarah Bear Twenty-two, who turns out to be the elusive bridesmaid. When Colton tells Winnie that mud found in her house contains mushrooms, she realizes that it may have been left by Hank, who has an old cabin in the woods, and she enlists her best friend, park ranger Dot, to help her find it. Soon after they find camping gear inside the cabin that Hank probably took from Winnie’s house, someone starts shooting at them, and they must run for their lives. Winnie realizes that she must find out a lot more about the bride and groom before she can possibly understand who murdered Jack and is willing to kill again to keep a secret.
A budding romance and an age-old motive combine in a heartwarming cozy.Pub Date: April 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2349-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
One of those rare thrillers whose revelations actually intensify its suspense instead of dissipating it. The final pages are...
A perfect wife’s disappearance plunges her husband into a nightmare as it rips open ugly secrets about his marriage and, just maybe, his culpability in her death.
Even after they lost their jobs as magazine writers and he uprooted her from New York and spirited her off to his childhood home in North Carthage, Mo., where his ailing parents suddenly needed him at their side, Nick Dunne still acted as if everything were fine between him and his wife, Amy. His sister Margo, who’d gone partners with him on a local bar, never suspected that the marriage was fraying, and certainly never knew that Nick, who’d buried his mother and largely ducked his responsibilities to his father, stricken with Alzheimer’s, had taken one of his graduate students as a mistress. That’s because Nick and Amy were both so good at playing Mr. and Ms. Right for their audience. But that all changes the morning of their fifth anniversary when Amy vanishes with every indication of foul play. Partly because the evidence against him looks so bleak, partly because he’s so bad at communicating grief, partly because he doesn’t feel all that grief-stricken to begin with, the tide begins to turn against Nick. Neighbors who’d been eager to join the police in the search for Amy begin to gossip about him. Female talk-show hosts inveigh against him. The questions from Detective Rhonda Boney and Detective Jim Gilpin get sharper and sharper. Even Nick has to acknowledge that he hasn’t come close to being the husband he liked to think he was. But does that mean he deserves to get tagged as his wife’s killer? Interspersing the mystery of Amy’s disappearance with flashbacks from her diary, Flynn (Dark Places, 2009, etc.) shows the marriage lumbering toward collapse—and prepares the first of several foreseeable but highly effective twists.
One of those rare thrillers whose revelations actually intensify its suspense instead of dissipating it. The final pages are chilling.Pub Date: June 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-58836-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
