Pennac’s gift for charmingly nonstop non sequitur makes this featherlight case less like most English-language crime fiction...
Life would be perfect for Benjamin Malaussène (The Scapegoat, 1998)—who, just fired from his job at Vendetta Press, is free to resume his unofficial status as professional scapegoat—if it weren’t for the new man in his fortune-teller sister Thérèse’s life. Aristocratic Marie-Colbert de Roberval, Councillor Grade One in the National Audit Office is only after Thérèse for the contributions her insight into the future can make to his political career, and he doesn’t want any of her relatives at the wedding. Determined to squelch the nuptials, Ben and his co-conspirators—his gay friend Theo, his brothers Jeremy and Half Pint, and Clara and Gervaise, who run Passion Fruit, the play group for prostitutes’ children—rush to dig dirt on the impetuous suitor, but not even the recent suicide of his brother discourages Thérèse. So she goes ahead with the wedding, even though it’ll mean the loss of her clairvoyant powers, and leaves her husband the first night of their honeymoon—only to return to her own near-death in a suspicious fire and a looming charge of murder when someone tosses the bridegroom over the balustrade of his Paris home. The new widow shyly avers that she has an alibi, the lover who got her pregnant the night her husband was killed. So why won’t she produce this crucial witness, and what can Ben to help her in his absence?
Pennac’s gift for charmingly nonstop non sequitur makes this featherlight case less like most English-language crime fiction than like the comic-strip film farces of Pedro Almodóvar.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-86046-801-2
Page Count: 190
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hill’s debut is a chilling psychological thriller with an unusual heroine and a page-turning storyline.
A woman who uses her research skills to track down missing people finds herself over her head in a dangerous case.
Hester Thursby has taken a leave from her library job at Harvard to help her boyfriend, Morgan, care for Kate, the little daughter of Daphne, his twin sister and Hester’s best friend. When she gets a call from Lila Blaine of New Hampshire, who wants her to find Sam, the brother who’s been missing for 12 years, she’s attracted by the promise of mental stimulation and extra money. Lila gives Hester a stack of postcards from all over the United States, each composed of photos her brother presumably took himself and a single sentence. Sam ran away with Gabe DiPursio, a 14-year-old foster child who was staying with Lila and him at the time. Lila admits the reason she wants to find Sam is because she’s selling a valuable piece of lake property. After talking to Gabe’s former foster mother and the social worker he had at the time, Hester, using the most recent postcards as clues, discovers that Sam and Gabe are living in Boston, where Sam’s posing as Aaron Gewirtzman, a young college graduate who was killed in an accident. She doesn’t know that the pair have left a trail of disaster in their wake: Sam has used his charm and good looks to hook up with wealthy women while Gabe uses his computer skills to raise money to tide them over between marks. Sam’s currently preoccupied by the wealthy socialite he’s dating, but Gabe, who meets Hester when she scopes them out by pretending to be looking for an apartment to rent, becomes totally fixated on her. Real danger threatens Hester when she learns too much about their past and present.
Hill’s debut is a chilling psychological thriller with an unusual heroine and a page-turning storyline.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1590-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
A suspenseful tale of hypocrisy, greed, and cunning finally overcome by social conscience.
A pair of Regency sleuths take on a miscarriage of justice in the past that leads to murders in the present.
Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, despises injustice in every form, and his wife, Hero, is a committed reformer even though her father, Lord Jarvis, is cousin to the Prince Regent and a major power behind the throne (Who Slays the Wicked, 2019, etc.). Shortly after Hero spots a child watching their house, Devlin’s valet, Jules Calhoun, goes out and returns with news that someone he knows has been murdered. Nicholas Hayes, youngest son of the late Earl of Seaforth, was convicted of murder, sent to Australia, and thought to have died. But now he’s returned with Ji, a child he’s brought from China, only to be stabbed to death with a sickle in Pennington’s Tea Gardens. Why would Hayes risk his life to return to England, where he would be hanged if caught? The question plagues Devlin as he reconsiders the evidence that led to the conviction of Hayes. He revisits the scandal that was hushed up back when Hayes was accused of kidnapping the daughter of a wealthy man and shooting to death a married woman on whom he’d reportedly set his eye. The other suspects, all wealthy and well-connected, include Hayes’ cousin Ethan, who’s succeeded to the title since Hayes' two older brothers died before their father, and the Comte de Compans, whose wife he was convicted of killing. The more he learns of Hayes, the more Devlin is convinced he was an innocent man who took the blame for things he never did, including kidnapping Theo Brownbeck’s daughter, Katherine, with whom he was actually eloping and whom Brownbeck immediately married off to Sir Lindsey Forbes, a power in the East India Company. Hayes’ murder is followed by the deaths of several of his enemies. If Hayes were alive, Devlin would suspect him; since he’s not, Devlin and Hero risk their lives following clues no one wants to see uncovered.
A suspenseful tale of hypocrisy, greed, and cunning finally overcome by social conscience.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-399-58568-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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