Yeadings (The Glass Wall, 2007, etc.) hangs back and lets his varied and able underlings share the glory in this nifty...
An auction-house porter reeling from his half-brother’s near-death is captivated by a mysterious model probing the murder of her twin sister.
Sandy Craddock, Alicia Laing’s son without benefit of marriage, is sure that the cyclist who ran down Warren Laing, Alicia’s legitimate second child, was aiming for him. So when Sandy’s boss, auctioneer Charles Hennigan, misidentifies the hospitalized, heavily bandaged Laing as Craddock, the aspiring antiquarian doesn’t set the record straight. Instead, he lies doggo in Warren’s posh flat until Fiona Morgan, who says she’s an acquaintance, turns up at Sandy’s side in Warren’s bed. Fiona marvels at Sandy’s indifference to his brother’s injury. After all, she’s still mourning the loss of her sister Martine, who drowned a year earlier in Cyprus when her car rolled off an embankment. She invites him to a weeklong art course, where Sandy is surprised to discover that Fiona is the nude figure model. But his jealousy over the eyes on Fiona’s shapely form is the least of Sandy’s problems. His boisterous easel partner, Rosa Burford, turns up with a knife in her back. Sandy and Fiona spirit her corpse out of the residence hall and dump it by her car, only to have it disappear the next day. Once Rosa’s disappearance registers on her classmates, Superintendent Mike Yeadings’s Thames Valley squad, fresh from investigating the disappearance of three-year-old Jilly Bell, is all over the case.
Yeadings (The Glass Wall, 2007, etc.) hangs back and lets his varied and able underlings share the glory in this nifty ensemble piece.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-37531-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dunne/Minotaur
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
Proceed at your own risk.
Pioneering pathologist Kay Scarpetta (Trace, 2004, etc.) goes up against a wraithlike killer whose self-appointed mission is to “relieve others of their suffering.”
Practice, practice, practice. If only 16-year-old South Carolina tennis phenom Drew Martin had stuck to the court instead of going off to Rome to party, her tortured corpse wouldn’t be baffling the Italian authorities, headed inexplicably by medico legale Capt. Ottorino Poma, and the International Investigative Response team, which includes both Scarpetta and her lover, forensic psychologist Benton Wesley. But the young woman’s murder and the gruesome forensic riddles it poses are something of a sideshow to the main event: the obligatory maundering of the continuing cast. Wesley still won’t leave Boston for the woman he tepidly insists he loves. Scarpetta’s niece, computer whiz Lucy Farinelli, continues to be jealously protective of her aunt. Scarpetta’s investigator, Pete Marino, is so besotted by the trailer-trash pickup who’s pushing his buttons that he does some terrible things. And Scarpetta herself is threatened by every misfit in the known universe, from a disgruntled mortician to oracular TV shrink Marilyn Self. Cornwell’s trademark forensics have long since been matched by Karin Slaughter and CSI. What’s most distinctive about this venerable franchise is the kitchen-sink plotting; the soap-opera melodrama that prevents any given volume from coming to a satisfying end; and the emphasis on titanic battles between Scarpetta and a series of Antichrists.
Proceed at your own risk.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-399-15393-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
A run-of-the-mill mystery that includes some welcome tips on the health benefits of chocolate.
An accountant and her lawyer husband must revisit his high school days in order to solve a murder.
Lee Woodyard is no fan of the scheme her husband, Joe, and her uncle, Hogan Jones, the local police chief, hatch to buy the Bailey house next door and flip it. But even though she’d rather be at her job as business manager at her aunt’s chocolate specialty shop (The Chocolate Bunny Brouhaha, 2016, etc.), she agrees to meet with the plumber for an estimate—a meeting that turns dangerous when plumber Digger Brown finds a bundle of rags in the cellar. When he drops them, a gun hidden in the bundle goes off, sending a bullet whizzing past Lee. No one seems to know where the old fashioned six-shooter came from, but the accident recalls a past incident in which the Sharks, a group of high school boys that included Brad Davis, Chip Brown, Sharpy Brock, Tad Bailey, and Spud Dirk, pulled a prank that could have been deadly. Years ago, when several Sharks pretended as a joke to rob a convenience store in which Brad was working, Brad pulled a real gun and fired but hit nothing more vital than the Frozen Rainbow Machine. Now Brad’s the president of the VanHorn–Davis Foundation, whose charitable donations underwrite many improvements to the Michigan lakeside town of Warner Pier. When Lee accompanies Hogan to the Bailey house to show him where the gun was, they find more than they bargained for—Spud’s corpse in a cupboard. Although Hogan’s the police chief, he must stay out of the investigation because Spud had been competing with him to buy the Bailey house. So Lee, who’d prefer to stick to chocolates, is forced to join Joe in detective work.
A run-of-the-mill mystery that includes some welcome tips on the health benefits of chocolate.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-10000-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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