Restaurant rivalry heats up when an Alabama chef is murdered.
Sarah Blair, a law firm receptionist who’s going partners with her twin sister, Emily, and Emily’s boyfriend, Marcus, in farm-to-table restaurant Southwind, couldn’t care less about councilwoman Anne Hightower’s concerns about developing Wheaton’s entertainment district through a cohesive plan. While Sarah waits for city building inspector Louis Botts to get around to checking out Southwind, pushy Jane Clark is cleaning up across the street with rival farm-to-table Jane’s Place, courtesy of a menu full of vegan treats from the saucepan of wunderkind chef Riley Miller. Riley soon buys the farm, but Jane continues to make beaucoup bucks at the table. When inspector Botts fails to appear, Sarah becomes alarmed as the police zero in on Anne’s son, contractor Jacob Hightower, as the prime suspect in Riley’s murder. Jacob rides with the Wheaton Wildcats, a motorcycle club composed largely of veterans and veterinarians with a healthy dose of senior citizens thrown in for fun. Riley, who liked to hitch a ride with whichever Wildcat had the biggest bike, ditched Jacob early on for someone with more RPMs. Even though her boss at the law firm, Harlan Endicott, agrees to represent Jacob, Sarah fears that the conservative attorney will be no match for Wheaton’s finest. Her investigation, accompanied by the obligatory pleas from her friends to leave sleuthing to the professionals, has all-too-foreseeable results
Even the vegan fare blazes no trails.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1949-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
Categories: COZY MYSTERY | GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE
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Lindsay Boxer faces a ton of trouble in the latest entry in Patterson and Paetro’s Women’s Murder Club series.
Senior crime reporter Cindy Thomas is writing a biography of Evan Burke, a notorious serial killer who sits in solitary confinement in San Quentin. She’s kidnapped by thugs wanting her to talk about her best friend, Lindsay Boxer, who’s an SFPD homicide detective and the story’s main character. San Francisco has a restrictive new gun law, and gun-totin’ folks everywhere have their boxer shorts in a twist. A national resistance movement has formed—Defenders of the Second—whose motto is “We will not comply.” They find it outrageous that the new law makes it illegal to own a gun that can kill 50 people with a single clip. Meanwhile, lots of bodies show up: A young girl disappears and is later found dead in a ditch, and ex-cops are found dead with their lips stapled shut and “You talk, you die” written on their foreheads. An inmate is found hanged in prison. And “a massive but unspecified load of military-style weaponry was en route from Mexico to the City by the Bay.” In a “frustrating, multipronged case,” there’s a harrowing shootout memorialized in a video showing “twenty-two of the scariest seconds” of Boxer’s life. She’s an appealing series hero with loving family and friends, but she may arrive at a crossroads where she has “to choose between my work and [my] baby girl.” The formulaic story has unmemorable writing, but it’s entertaining and well told. You probably won’t have to worry about the main characters, who have thus far survived 21 adventures. Except for the little girl, you can expect people to get what they deserve. It's relatively mild as crime novels go, but the women characters are serious, strong, and admirable.
Enjoyable storytelling by two masters of the craft.Pub Date: May 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-49937-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
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Patterson and Ellis put their characters through hell in this hard-edged second installment of their Black Book series after The Black Book (2017).
A young girl is one of four people gunned down in a “very, very bad” K-Town drive-by shooting in Chicago. Police are under intense political pressure to solve it, so Detective Billy Harney is assigned to the Special Operations Section to put the brakes on the gang violence on the West Side. His new partner is Detective Carla Griffin, whom colleagues describe as “sober as an undertaker” and “as fun as a case of hemorrhoids.” And she looks like the last thing he needs, a pill popper. (But is she?) Department muckety-mucks want Harney to fail, and Griffin is supposed to spy on him. The poor guy already has a hell of a backstory: His daughter died and his wife committed suicide (or did she?) four years earlier, he’s been shot in the head, charged with murder (and exonerated), and helped put his own father in prison. (Nothing like a tormented hero!) Now the deaths still haunt him while he and Griffin begin to suspect they’re not looking at a simple turf war starring the Imperial Gangster Nation. Meanwhile, the captain in Internal Affairs is deep in the pocket of some bad guys who run an international human trafficking ring, and he loathes Harney. The protagonist is lucky to have Patti, his sister and fellow detective, as his one reliable friend who lets him know he’s being set up. The authors do masterful work creating flawed characters to root for or against, and they certainly pile up the troubles for Billy Harney. Abundant nasty twists will hold readers’ rapt attention in this dark, violent, and fast-moving thriller.
Top-drawer crime fiction. The authors are tough on the hero, but the hero is tough.Pub Date: March 29, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-49940-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
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