An intriguing and engaging crime tale with some levity to lighten the pandemic element.
In this eighth installment of a mystery series, the Chautauqua Institution confronts its first Covid-19 death—or was it murder?
Another summer season brings another mysterious death to the Institution, an educational, artistic, and spiritual retreat in Western New York state. On a bench in Bestor Plaza, Mimi Goldman, a reporter for Chautauqua’s The Dailyand an incorrigible sleuth, and her partner in crime-solving, the spirited 95-year-old Sylvia Pritchard, are savoring an outdoor, socially distanced coffee break. Mimi, the series’ lead protagonist, tells her friend that last week’s running gag in the snarky, satirical publication Buglelists the plagues that have beset the Institution in this 2020 summer of Covid-19. And Mimi and Sylvia are among those targeted by the anonymous Bugle writer: “The plague of hail is Chautauqua’s own geezer gumshoes: Me-Me Goldman and Over-the-Hillvia Pritchard” because they “clamor like a drumbeat of hail for attention.” Mimi mentions her boss disclosed that the anonymous Buglewriter is the wealthy Albert Martin, and a surprised Sylvia responds that he is the Institution member who died of Covid-19. On Saturday, during a Zoom staff meeting, Mimi receives an email from Al’s sister, Shannon, asking for help in investigating his death. It turns out it was a telemed doctor who linked Al’s symptoms to Covid-19, and the two surviving Martin brothers had his body cremated without the benefit of an autopsy. There are plenty of suspects—especially the diverse members of the dysfunctional Martin clan—who may have wanted Al dead. But Mimi’s first task is to figure out how he died. With an enthusiastic Sylvia at the wheel (Mimi doesn’t drive), the two women head out to question the coroner. In this enjoyable novel, Pines uses tightly constructed dialogue, often tinged with light, sarcastic repartee, to establish her captivating characters. The author also presents a rich assortment of potential motives for murder, with money and revenge topping the list. There is a new, gently somber tone to this episode, reflective of the first summer of the pandemic. Concerts, lectures, and even sporting events are conducted remotely, and Pines effectively communicates the humorous, frustrating technical quirks that have become routine over the past year.
An intriguing and engaging crime tale with some levity to lighten the pandemic element.Pub Date: June 22, 2021
ISBN: 979-8-52-501736-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.
After more than three decades of producing bestselling legal thrillers, Grisham tries his hand at a whodunit.
Eleanor Barnett wants Simon Latch to write her a will. That’s pretty much his job description, since practicing law in Braxton, Virginia, for 18 years hasn’t given him much opportunity to spread his wings. But the case of Netty, as she insists he call her, is different. She’s an 85-year-old widow whose second husband, Harry Korsak, left her with something like $20 million in cash and securities. She has a pair of stepsons, Clyde and Jerry Korsak, she’s determined to disinherit. And she already has a will, a document Wally Thackerman drafted a few weeks ago that basically allowed him, as Simon soon discovers, to pillage her estate. So instead of following his usual procedure and asking his longtime secretary, Matilda Clark, to type out the will, Simon types it himself and has it witnessed without saying anything to her. Of course he’d never do what Wally Thackerman did, but given his poverty, his gambling addiction, and his estrangement from his wife, Paula, whose income is a lot more stable than his own, he wouldn’t mind drawing just a bit on Netty’s wealth. As it happens, his new client turns out to be more trouble than she’s worth, maybe even more trouble than she would’ve been worth to Wally. And when she ends up dying, her death is swiftly identified as murder, with every indication that Simon killed her himself. The whodunit is unremarkable, but Grisham handles the legal complexities of the case with professional finesse and adds a wonderfully poignant portrait of a nothingburger lawyer trying his best to keep things more or less legal.
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780385548984
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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