Have no fear: The Minimum Wage Manhunter eventually produces a solution as ingenious as it is unlikely.
Forced out of his position as a shipboard waiter after three murders on his cruise ship (Sunny Side Up, 2018) roil the waters, Liam Johnson finds a new entry-level job that involves him in another homicide.
Li isn’t looking for employment at Esther’s Family Grocery, but Reuben Rodriguez, who’s already working there, is so outrageously friendly and encouraging to him that he’s soon hired by store manager Leo Lewis, ne Leonard Lewitski. He gets a considerably less warm welcome from Oscar Lindstrom, the splenetic restaurant critic who’s just left his job at the Shorewood Gazette. Li’s first meeting with Oscar ends when he dresses Oscar down for his racist insults of Reuben. Their second meeting ends with Li shouting for someone to call the police after he finds Oscar bashed to death in the grocery’s spice aisle. Except for Oscar’s adoring third wife, Kathryn Lindstrom, pretty much everyone in California seems to have hated Oscar, from Jason Lindstrom, his pitifully abused son, to Frank Dixon, his editor at the Gazette, to Constance Henderson, the mayor’s wife. Ignoring all these promising suspects, Detective Antoine Hughes becomes more and more convinced that Reuben is the killer he’s looking for, and when he detains the young man and his brother, Fernando, Li knows he has to do something to help them. But the mystery of Oscar’s death remains puzzling even though every character Stallings presents is so remarkably forthright in expressing their feelings about him—Oscar’s ex-lover Miranda Raglietti calls him “a critic to his soul,” for instance, and Jason tells Hughes, “Dad was a monster”—that the biggest mystery is how anyone could have killed him without leaving a trail a mile wide.
Have no fear: The Minimum Wage Manhunter eventually produces a solution as ingenious as it is unlikely.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61035-343-4
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Pace Press
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
Tudor came out swinging with Chalk Man (2018), but this one puts her firmly on the map. Not to be missed.
When Joe Thorne takes a teaching job in the small English village of his youth, he soon realizes the darkness he's tried to forget certainly hasn’t forgotten him.
Returning to the tiny mining village of Arnhill wasn’t English teacher Joe Thorne’s first choice, and teaching at Arnhill Academy, which he attended as a boy, is the furthest thing from a dream job. But his choices are limited. A gambling problem has put him in debt to a man who will break his kneecaps, or worse, if he doesn’t get his money. Well, actually, he has a frightening woman named Gloria on hand to do that for him, and she’s got her eye on Joe. But Joe has a plan. He moves into a cottage where an Arnhill teacher recently killed her young son and then herself, writing “NOT MY SON” in blood on the wall. But beggars can’t be choosers, and Joe tries to settle in at Arnhill, where it’s soon obvious that his old foes never left, and they don’t want him in their village. Stephen Hurst, a bully Joe ran with as a kid, has a hold on the town, and his son Jeremy, an Arnhill student, is a chip off the old block. Unfortunately, Stephen shares a secret with Joe that involves Joe’s beloved sister, Annie, who disappeared when she was 8 and was very different when she returned. The events leading up to her death soon after were very strange indeed, and everything leads back to a mine shaft that is the source of ghost stories and rumors that have persisted for hundreds of years. The past and present are about to collide in chilling fashion. With Joe, Tudor avoids going the way of the unreliable narrator: He doesn’t lie to readers, even if he lies to others, and he has a snarky sense of humor that adds levity. Tudor maintains a tone of creeping dread throughout the book, of something lingering always in the background, coyly hiding its face while whispering promises of very bad things to come. In the last quarter, however, she goes for broke with outright horror, giving readers an effective jolt of adrenaline that will carry them all the way to the terrifying conclusion. Readers won’t know what hit them.
Tudor came out swinging with Chalk Man (2018), but this one puts her firmly on the map. Not to be missed.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6101-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
Fluke lavishes so much attention on the mechanics of location shooting that there’s scant time for the murder, much less its...
Even the murder of its cranky director can’t stop the filming of Crisis in Cherrywood or halt the snooping of Lake Eden’s premier baker.
Just when Hannah Swenson’s decided to accept neither of the marriage proposals tendered at the end of Peach Cobbler Murder (2005)—turning down both sweet-tempered dentist Norman Rhoades and hot-blooded lawman Mike Kingston—another suitor turns up. Her old college classmate Ross Barton, now a Hollywood producer who thinks Lake Eden is just the spot to shoot his new movie, recruits Hannah’s mom Delores as set designer, her younger sister Michelle as production assistant and her middle sister Andrea as an extra. He even casts Andrea’s five-year-old, Tracey, to play heroine Lynne Larchmont as a child and presses Hannah’s cat Moishe into service as her childhood pet. For Hannah he reserves the role of constant companion, escorting her to dinner, inviting her to view the dailies and letting her watch the filming—which gives her a front-row seat as Dean Lawrence, instructing leading man Anson Burke on how to use a prop pistol, shoots himself fatally instead. Since Mike has made it clear to Hannah that she must leave investigating to the professionals, she can’t investigate, she can only snoop—much to the delight of Andrea, Norman and Lake Edenites everywhere.
Fluke lavishes so much attention on the mechanics of location shooting that there’s scant time for the murder, much less its solution.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7582-0294-6
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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