by CJ Connor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 22, 2023
Like its protagonist, this debut’s quiet charm offers something different and special.
The mood at a board game shop darkens when the owner’s son is implicated in the death of a regular.
Though he’s not feeling great about his divorce from his husband, Ben Rosencrantz doesn’t think leaving his career as an English professor marks him as failure. His quiet, humble demeanor wasn’t the best fit for academia. So while he misses his students, he’s OK with being back in Salt Lake City to help his ailing father run Of Dice and Decks, the family board game shop. And the shop isn’t exactly a failure either, though it’s having growing pains as the Sugar House neighborhood gets more expensive while board games don’t. Ben enjoys the weekly Nertz crew, the familiarity of the regulars, and a budding friendship with the boy-next-store Ezra McCaslin, who owns McCaslin’s Flowers & Events—though he’s sure their friendship will probably grow to nothing more. Ben doesn’t love all the shop regulars—there’s a wide range of gamers—and people like the abrasive Clive Newton, who shows up and tries to offload a vintage game at a too-good-to-be-true price, make him want to crawl back into his shell. Ben’s nervous acquiescence in life ends when Clive is stabbed at the store’s front door. He worries how this might look to detectives investigating the case, particularly when a backpack full of cash appears on the doorstep soon after Clive’s demise. In a departure from the norm, Det. Louise Shelley is far from convinced that Ben’s involved in Clive’s death. But when Ben learns that the case could grow cold without leads, he’s determined to find at least one potential suspect. Assisted by Ezra, who may not be content being just Ben’s friend, he examines the culture surrounding the shop for clues.
Like its protagonist, this debut’s quiet charm offers something different and special.Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2023
ISBN: 9781496742223
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
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by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
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
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by Richard Osman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 22, 2020
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
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Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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