A hair-raising procedural highlights unselfish love, sacrifice, and man’s inhumanity to man.
DS Aector McAvoy tackles his most horrifying case in a long career of solving unusual crimes in the Yorkshire city of Hull.
Aector is a gentle giant deeply in love with Roisin, his fierce Traveller wife, and protective of his children and his boss, DS Trish Pharaoh, who hasn’t been herself lately. His son, Fin, is still suffering nightmares after having been targeted by a vengeful killer when Aector is called out to the woods where a hiker has noticed a horribly mangled corpse tangled in the roots of a fallen tree. Of the few houses nearby, the one belonging to classicist Calpurnia Dodds-Wynne provides clues to what becomes a series of gruesome deaths. The corpse is identified as university student Ian Musson, who was thought to have dropped out. Roman coins had been driven into his eyes with crucifixion nails while he was still alive. On such a cold case, the murder team must look into the past for clues and search for Ian’s mates, some of whom have dicey backgrounds involving the theft of antiquities. Calpurnia and her behemoth husband, who are into animal sacrifice and ancient religious rituals, offer no help even though Ian was a friend of their son Magnus’, another university dropout. Dogged detective work and Aector’s storied ability to look beneath the surface lead to more horrific discoveries and deadly encounters.
A hair-raising procedural highlights unselfish love, sacrifice, and man’s inhumanity to man.Pub Date: June 7, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-72785-054-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.
Someone is stalking the streets of Lt. Eve Dallas’s New York, intent on bringing new life to sex workers by snuffing out their old ones.
In 2061, prostitutes are called licensed companions, and that’s Leesa Culver’s job description when she’s accosted by a plausible-looking artist who wants to hire her as a model for the night. Before the night is over, she’s been drugged, strangled, costumed, and posed as an uncanny replica of Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring. The shock of the crime is deepened by the murder the following night of licensed companion Bobby Ren, whose body is discovered at an art gallery entrance costumed and posed as Gainsborough’s Blue Boy. The killer clearly has an obsessive agenda, a rapid-fire timetable, and access to unlimited financial resources that have allowed him to commission expensive custom-made outfits for the victims. This last detail both marks his power and points to the way Dallas, her gazillionaire husband, Roarke, and her sidekick, Det. Delia Peabody, will track him down by methodically narrowing the field of consumers who’ve purchased the costly costumes. After identifying the guilty party two-thirds of the way through the story, they’ll still face an uphill battle convicting a killer with no conscience, no respect for the law, and a budget that would easily cover the means to jump bail, remove his ankle tracker, and hire a private jet to escape to a foreign land with no extradition treaty. Robb keeps it all consistently absorbing by sweating every procedural detail along with her heroine. Only Dallas’ climactic interrogation of her prisoner is a letdown, because it’s perfectly obvious how she’s going to wangle a confession out of him.
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370822
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 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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