Though the answers aren’t nearly as interesting as the questions themselves, Harrod-Eagles (Hard Going, 2014, etc.) is never...
DI Bill Slider asks why the thief who killed West London television personality Rowland Egerton in his home ignored his wallet and most of his treasures and made off with exactly two items.
Egerton, it turns out, didn’t know nearly as much about antiques as you’d think from watching Going, Going, Gone and Antiques Galore! His gift for charming people enough to sell them anything made him a perfect complement to John Lavender, his wooden, knowledgeable partner in the Fulham Road shop whose operations Egerton’s success on the telly largely subsidized. Now the partnership has been severed by a letter opener snatched from Egerton’s table. His alert cleaner, Molly Bean, notices two absences from his extensive collection of antiquities: a Fabergé malachite box and a Berthe Morisot painting. Neither of the missing pieces is valueless, of course, but Egerton’s killer passed up many more valuable items to take them. Was it Dale Sholto, the daughter Egerton abandoned on his way to the top? Rupert Melling, the equally charming antiquities expert he quarreled with publicly? Felicity Marsh, the television presenter whom rumor linked him to romantically? Philip Masterson, the former Minister for the Arts, whose wife, Antiques Galore! expert Julia “Bunny” Rabbet, died of a brain hemorrhage a month ago? Or was it one of the blackmail victims Egerton, nee Phil Harris, delighted in collecting from and tormenting?
Though the answers aren’t nearly as interesting as the questions themselves, Harrod-Eagles (Hard Going, 2014, etc.) is never less than expert in presenting suspects, combing through the evidence, varying the tone and showing new ways that Egerton was even more of a bounder than you suspected.Pub Date: March 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8460-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.
In Archie Goodwin's 15th adventure since the death of his creator, Rex Stout, his gossipy Aunt Edna Wainwright lures him from 34th Street to his carefully unnamed hometown in Ohio to investigate the death of a well-hated bank president.
Tom Blankenship, the local police chief, thinks there’s no case since Logan Mulgrew shot himself. But Archie’s mother, Marjorie Goodwin, and Aunt Edna know lots of people with reason to have killed him. Mulgrew drove rival banker Charles Purcell out of business, forcing Purcell to get work as an auto mechanic, and foreclosed on dairy farmer Harold Mapes’ spread. Lester Newman is convinced that Mulgrew murdered his ailing wife, Lester’s sister, so that he could romance her nurse, Carrie Yeager. And Donna Newman, Lester’s granddaughter, might have had an eye on her great-uncle’s substantial estate. Nor is Archie limited to mulling over his relatives’ gossip, for Trumpet reporter Verna Kay Padgett, whose apartment window was shot out the night her column raised questions about the alleged suicide, is perfectly willing to publish a floridly actionable summary of the leading suspects that delights her editor, shocks Archie, and infuriates everyone else. The one person missing is Archie’s boss, Nero Wolfe (Death of an Art Collector, 2019, etc.), and fans will breathe a sigh of relief when he appears at Marjorie’s door, debriefs Archie, notices a telltale clue, prepares dinner for everyone, sleeps on his discovery, and arranges a meeting of all parties in Marjorie’s living room in which he names the killer.
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5988-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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