Eighth in Edgar winner Handler's series showcasing rich, cool, self-searching novelist-ghostwriter-to-the-famous Stuart (Hoagy) Hoag (The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy, 1996, etc.). Hoagy lives in plush New York quarters with actress ex-wife Merilee Nash, their baby Tracy, basset hound Lulu, English housekeeper Pam, and handyman-bodyguard Vic, on leave from Hoagy's Connecticut farm. Jolting the serene ambiance comes a series of manila envelopes, purportedly from a fledgling author-friend, each containing a covering letter and an account—supposedly fictional—of the murder of a woman, each signed the Answer Man. Trouble is, each of these missives is followed by the discovery of a real dead woman—five of them altogether—throwing the city into panic and driving Hoagy into tense conferences with old acquaintance Lt. Romaine Very and his boss Inspector Dante Feldman, of Son of Sam fame. Hoagy is fighting the conviction that the killer is his long-ago closest friend Tuttle Cash—an athletic star who'd once saved Hoagy's life- -now the hard-drinking front for a trendy East Side bar whose violence had, some time back, put his landscape designer girlfriend Tansy Smollet into the hospital for months of plastic surgery. Finally, finally, with a gunshot on the Harvard football field, the nightmare is over. Or is it? A stomach-churning roller-coaster ride of graphic sex, heavy- handed profanity, high-level tension, hip dialogue, and celebrity name-dropping, with occasional affected, smart-alecky airs and way too much of Lulu the dog. No feast for the fainthearted, then, even though most readers won't put it down before the last hypnotic page.
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-385-48052-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.
Too much free time leads a New Hampshire bookseller into yet another case of murder.
Now that Tricia Miles has Pixie Poe and Mr. Everett practically running her bookstore, Haven’t Got a Clue, she finds herself at loose ends. Her wealthy sister, Angelica, who in the guise of Nigela Ricita has invested heavily in making Stoneham a bookish tourist attraction, is entering the amateur competition for the Great Booktown Bake-Off. So Tricia, who’s recently taken up baking as a hobby, decides to join her and spends a lot of time looking for the perfect cupcake recipe. A visit to another bookstore leaves Tricia witnessing a nasty argument between owner Joyce Widman and next-door neighbor Vera Olson over the trimming of tree branches that hang over Joyce’s yard—also overheard by new town police officer Cindy Pearson. After Tricia accepts Joyce’s offer of some produce from her garden, they find Vera skewered by a pitchfork, and when Police Chief Grant Baker arrives, Joyce is his obvious suspect. Ever since Tricia moved to Stoneham, the homicide rate has skyrocketed (Poisoned Pages, 2018, etc.), and her history with Baker is fraught. She’s also become suspicious about the activities at Pets-A-Plenty, the animal shelter where Vera was a dedicated volunteer. Tricia’s offered her expertise to the board, but president Toby Kingston has been less than welcoming. With nothing but baking on her calendar, Tricia has plenty of time to investigate both the murder and her vague suspicions about the shelter. Plenty of small-town friendships and rivalries emerge in her quest for the truth.
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0272-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
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
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