Overlong and not very mysterious, but a welcome prequel to the hero’s more jaded adventures.
Stewart Hoag’s first case.
Back in 1982, when his first novel has just catapulted him to fame, Hoagy meets stage and movie actress Merilee Nash, and they instantly fall in love and adopt a basset hound they christen Lulu. Everything’s set for a happily-ever-after (though readers familiar with Hoagy’s other cases will know it’s more complicated than that) until Hoagy gets a phone call from Maggie McKenna, his first love back in Oakmont, Connecticut. For years, Maggie’s mother Mary, the town librarian, had leukemia, but her sufferings ended when someone brained her with a paperweight bust of Mark Twain. Mary was such an important mentor to the budding writer that Hoagy feels he has to go back home to pay his respects to her, even though everyone in Oakmont has hated him ever since his father, Montgomery Hoag, closed the brass mill and threw the town, which it had already seriously polluted, into an economic tizzy it’s never recovered from. And it’s not really true, reflects Hoagy, that you can’t go home again: “You can. It’s just a totally unpleasant experience.” He’s in Oakmont just long enough to pick a fight with a pair of drug dealers, enjoy some meat loaf and macaroni with Maggie, get shot and left for dead, and miss Mary’s funeral. Even though Merilee, whom everyone recognizes and fawns over, leaves him to do a table reading for David Mamet back in New York, Lulu stays on and ends up fingering, or pawing, the obvious killer. So, as Hoagy acknowledges, it’s Lulu’s first case too.
Overlong and not very mysterious, but a welcome prequel to the hero’s more jaded adventures.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781613166130
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.
A 16-year-old savant uses his Groundhog Day gift to solve his grandfather’s murder.
Nishizawa’s compulsively readable puzzle opens with the discovery of the victim, patriarch Reijiro Fuchigami, sprawled on a futon in the attic of his elegant mansion, where his family has gathered for a consequential announcement about his estate. The weapon seems to be a copper vase lying nearby. Given this setup, the novel might have proceeded as a traditional whodunit but for two delightful features. The first is the ebullient narration of Fuchigami’s youngest grandson, Hisataro, thrust into the role of an investigator with more dedication than finesse. The second is Nishizawa’s clever premise: The 16-year-old Hisataro has lived ever since birth with a condition that occasionally has him falling into a time loop that he calls "the Trap," replaying the same 24 hours of his life exactly nine times before moving on. And, of course, the murder takes place on the first day of one of these loops. Can he solve the murder before the cycle is played out? His initial strategies—never leaving his grandfather’s side, focusing on specific suspects, hiding in order to observe them all—fall frustratingly short. Hisataro’s comical anxiety rises with every failed attempt to identify the culprit. It’s only when he steps back and examines all the evidence that he discovers the solution. First published in 1995, this is the first of Nishizawa’s novels to be translated into English. As for Hisataro, he ultimately concludes that his condition is not a burden but a gift: “Time’s spiral never ends.”
A fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.Pub Date: July 29, 2025
ISBN: 9781805335436
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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