A plucky, likable protagonist buoys this agreeably twisty thriller with a neatly packaged ending.
A private detective hired to find a young girl who vanished from an upscale children’s home soon discovers that the case is not at all as it appears in Miller’s mystery.
Hazel Cho, a 30-year-old private detective who’s about to go under if she can’t quickly drum up some more business, seems to have her dreams answered when Madeline Hemsley offers her $100,000 to find her goddaughter, 12-year-old Mia Thomas. The young girl seemingly vanished from St. Agnes, a private orphanage for children who have lost their parents or are experiencing other “family issues.” Mia disappeared three months ago, and Madeline refuses to let Hazel, who’s given a deadline of less than two weeks, to talk to any of the previous P.I.s who have worked the case. Desperate for the money, Hazel agrees to take the job and quickly becomes enmeshed in the curious world of St. Agnes as she interviews its eclectic faculty and staff, including the friendly administrator, Sonia Barreto, the ancient headmaster, Thomas Mackenzie, and the nervous choir teacher, Gregory Goolsbee. While attempting to gather clues at the orphanage’s fundraiser gala, Hazel is unexpectedly swept off her feet by Andrew DuPont, the son of a big-name donor. But the more people Hazel talks to, the less certain she becomes about anything that’s going on. Apparently, Mia was not the first girl to vanish at St. Agnes, the local police force seems suspiciously unhelpful, and Hazel becomes convinced that most of the people she talks to are flat-out lying to her. A shocking revelation midway through the book primes readers for even more twists and turns before Hazel finally learns the horrifying truth.
Hazel’s narration, which often directly addresses the reader, remains breezy and casual despite the increasingly grim subject matter that arises as the plot unfolds. Her humor grants some much-needed levity to the proceedings, such as her description of her fellow Korean American roommate: “He reminds me of an Asian Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, except without the sailor hat.” She also has moments of surprising insight, as when a client accuses her of doctoring photos that prove his wife’s infidelity: “Every day I feel like I’m one wrong move away from being throttled by an impotent man and his insecurity.” Hazel’s likability goes a long way toward smoothing over some of the novel’s bumps, which mainly consist of continuity errors that could have been caught with a tighter edit(a character says she was 17 when an event happened, then mentions that she was 16 when the event happened just one page later, for example). Miller does an effective job of throwing enough red herrings into the mix to keep readers on their toes, although devoted thriller readers will likely figure out at least some of the mysteries before the end. The story wraps up with a somewhat hokey “the villain conveniently explains their whole dastardly plan” scene—but that misstep is countered by yet another surprising revelation. Overall, Miller has crafted a suspenseful tale with quick pacing, naturalistic dialogue, and an endearing narrative voice that will likely leave fans of the genre more than satisfied.
A plucky, likable protagonist buoys this agreeably twisty thriller with a neatly packaged ending.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2024
ISBN: 9781737646396
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Houndstooth Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.
A sequel to The Grey Wolf (2024) that begins with the earlier novel’s last line: “We have a problem.” And what a problem it is.
Now that Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his allies in and out of the Sûreté du Québec have saved Canada’s water supply from poisoning on a grand scale, you might think they were entitled to some rest and relaxation in Three Pines. No such luck. Don Joseph Moretti, the Sixth Family head who ordered the hit-and-run on biologist Charles Langlois that nearly killed Gamache as well, is plotting still more criminal enterprises, and Gamache can’t be sure that Chief Inspector Evelyn Tardiff, who’s been cozying up to Moretti in order to get the goods on him, hasn’t gone over to the dark side herself. In fact, Gamache’s uncertainty about Evelyn sets the pattern for much of what follows, for another review of one of Langlois’ notebooks reveals a plot so monstrous that it’s impossible to be sure who’s not in on it. Is it really true, as paranoid online rumors have it, that “Canada is about to attack the U.S.”? Or is it really the other way around, as the discovery of War Plan Red would have it? As the threats loom larger and larger, they raise questions as to whether the Black Wolf, the evil power behind them, is Moretti, disgraced former Deputy Prime Minister Marcus Lauzon, whom Gamache has arranged to have released from prison, or someone even more highly placed. A brief introductory note dating Penny’s delivery of the uncannily prophetic manuscript to September 2024 will do little to assuage the anxieties of concerned readers.
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250328175
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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