The inspired idea of revisiting the youth of his aged sleuths in swinging England is matched by Fowler’s customary gusto in...
A prequel that finds Fowler’s imperishable detective duo (Bryant & May: Wild Chamber, 2017, etc.) already in hot water back in 1969 as they struggle to solve a country-house mystery deep in Kent, far from the resources of their Peculiar Crimes Unit.
When their lively pursuit of sociopathic criminal Burlington Bertie, ne Cedric Powles, gets a little too lively for public safety, Bryant and May’s boss, Roger Trapp, dispatches them on a more routine assignment: to babysit businessman Monty Hatton-Jones over the weekend, keeping him safe until he can give evidence against crooked developer Sir Charles Chamberlain Monday morning. What could possibly go wrong? Only this: Monty's fears for his life don’t prevent him from accepting a weekend invitation from Lady Beatrice Banks-Marion, who’s about to sell her late husband’s estate, Tavistock Hall, to millionaire Donald Burke for repurposing as the Burke Better Business School. Monty has a deal brewing with Burke and doesn’t intend to be talked out of the trip. Instead, he gets Bryant and May invited along with him, where they join Lady Beatrice’s stoner son, Lord Harry; Burke; his wife, Norma; his lawyer, Toby Stafford; nightclub singer Vanessa Harrow; mystery novelist Pamela Claxon; decorator Slade Wilson; the Rev. Trevor Patethric; and diverse members of the Tavistock domestic staff. A local army unit’s war games effectively isolate the place, making departure possible only through death, which obligingly arrives in the shape of five separate attempts on the lives of the assembled company, two of them successful. Suddenly, protecting the life of Monty Hatton-Jones looks like the least of Bryant and May’s problems.
The inspired idea of revisiting the youth of his aged sleuths in swinging England is matched by Fowler’s customary gusto in sweating the details. More fully fleshed-out suspects, clues, red herrings, twists, and honest mystery and detection than in the last three whodunits you read.Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-101-88709-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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