Though you’re not likely to share Des and Mitch’s infatuation with each other, you might just learn not to take everyone at...
Even in toney Dorset, background checks are advisable.
Connecticut state trooper Des Mitry has her hands full. A flasher is spending his weekend nights ringing the doorbells, but not the chimes, of the town’s rich old ladies. He leaves no clues, escapes notice by everyone but his targets and evades both prowl cars and stakeouts. But Des thinks she has a fix on Dorset’s wanker: Augie Donatelli, a retired New York City cop who became the live-in caretaker at the luxe Captain Chadwick House condos in the historic district, where he drinks too much and insults the residents. Des herself had a serious run-in with him, so when he’s killed by a baseball bat just ahead of where she’d been out of sight tailing him, she becomes suspect No. 1 in his death. Her lover, Mitch Berger, a movie critic and sometime sleuth (The Sour Cherry Surprise, 2008, etc.), thinks the flashing and the killing are unrelated, but to prove it, he’ll have to sip many iced teas with the local gentry, which include a childhood crush of his and the town’s leading lady, and chug a few beers with Des and a cop on vacation from the Big Apple. Meanwhile, unseemly family pedigrees come to light. Des and Mitch romp in the shower, on the beach and between the sheets. And Dorset is once again restored to New England picture-postcard tranquility.
Though you’re not likely to share Des and Mitch’s infatuation with each other, you might just learn not to take everyone at face value.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-312-37669-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that...
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett (Free Fire, 2007, etc.), once again at the governor’s behest, stalks the wraithlike figure who’s targeting elk hunters for death.
Frank Urman was taken down by a single rifle shot, field-dressed, beheaded and hung upside-down to bleed out. (You won’t believe where his head eventually turns up.) The poker chip found near his body confirms that he’s the third victim of the Wolverine, a killer whose animus against hunters is evidently being whipped up by anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore. The potential effects on the state’s hunting revenues are so calamitous that Governor Spencer Rulon pulls out all the stops, and Pickett is forced to work directly with Wyoming Game and Fish Director Randy Pope, the boss who fired him from his regular job in Saddlestring District. Three more victims will die in rapid succession before Joe is given a more congenial colleague: Nate Romanowski, the outlaw falconer who pledged to protect Joe’s family before he was taken into federal custody. As usual in this acclaimed series, the mystery is slight and its solution eminently guessable long before it’s confirmed by testimony from an unlikely source. But the people and scenes and enduring conflicts that lead up to that solution will stick with you for a long time.
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that periodically release the tension between the scheming adversaries.Pub Date: May 20, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-15488-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
This ran in the S.E.P. and resulted in more demands for the story in book form than ever recorded. Well, here it is and it is a honey. Imagine ten people, not knowing each other, not knowing why they were invited on a certain island house-party, not knowing their hosts. Then imagine them dead, one by one, until none remained alive, nor any clue to the murderer. Grand suspense, a unique trick, expertly handled.
Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1939
ISBN: 0062073478
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1939
SEEN & HEARD
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