The odd amalgam of porn, gossip and family values overlaid with forced humor is much less fun than Mama Sees Stars (2011).
The Bauer gals bicker their way through marital woes, engagement snafus and sexual innuendos.
Reluctantly accompanying her mama to the Himmarshee dump to retrieve the wedding ring she accidentally threw away, Mace Bauer discovers a diamond bracelet among the pork rinds, crab shells and empty dog food cans. The bauble, sad to say, adorns the arm of a very dead young woman bedecked in fetish garb. Mace’s fiance, Carlos the hunky homicide detective, gets the case, which is less interesting to Mama than the plight of her eldest daughter, Maddie, who insists on wearing an unbecoming yellow ensemble to her husband Kenny’s birthday do. Maddie, however, has a more serious problem: Could Kenny, newly obsessed with golf, be having an affair, and what ought she to do about her suspicions? She confides her woes to Mace, who, heading for the golf course to snoop, encounters a dishy if lascivious golf pro and a rapacious lesbian bartender, both of whom know secrets about the pseudo-folksy mayor and his cocktail-swilling wife. The trashed victim turns out to be the starchy librarian, whose twin sister arrives to settle her estate. Mace soon discovers that Kenny loaned his hunting cabin to certain golf club members who used it for swinging sex parties. The place is awash in champagne bottles, cigarette butts and a red thong, making Kenny suspect No. 1 in the librarian’s murder. But Mace and Mama, after escaping car tails, threats left nailed to their house door and hostile neighbors, prove Kenny innocent, while a plot twist readers will see coming from the first mention of twins ends the sleazy tale.
The odd amalgam of porn, gossip and family values overlaid with forced humor is much less fun than Mama Sees Stars (2011).Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7387-3615-0
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Midnight Ink/Llewellyn
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
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
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.
In Archie Goodwin's 15th adventure since the death of his creator, Rex Stout, his gossipy Aunt Edna Wainwright lures him from 34th Street to his carefully unnamed hometown in Ohio to investigate the death of a well-hated bank president.
Tom Blankenship, the local police chief, thinks there’s no case since Logan Mulgrew shot himself. But Archie’s mother, Marjorie Goodwin, and Aunt Edna know lots of people with reason to have killed him. Mulgrew drove rival banker Charles Purcell out of business, forcing Purcell to get work as an auto mechanic, and foreclosed on dairy farmer Harold Mapes’ spread. Lester Newman is convinced that Mulgrew murdered his ailing wife, Lester’s sister, so that he could romance her nurse, Carrie Yeager. And Donna Newman, Lester’s granddaughter, might have had an eye on her great-uncle’s substantial estate. Nor is Archie limited to mulling over his relatives’ gossip, for Trumpet reporter Verna Kay Padgett, whose apartment window was shot out the night her column raised questions about the alleged suicide, is perfectly willing to publish a floridly actionable summary of the leading suspects that delights her editor, shocks Archie, and infuriates everyone else. The one person missing is Archie’s boss, Nero Wolfe (Death of an Art Collector, 2019, etc.), and fans will breathe a sigh of relief when he appears at Marjorie’s door, debriefs Archie, notices a telltale clue, prepares dinner for everyone, sleeps on his discovery, and arranges a meeting of all parties in Marjorie’s living room in which he names the killer.
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5988-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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