A well-crafted whodunit with an engaging cast and ambiance.
In this mystery sequel, a newly appointed police commissioner must deal with a protest, a riot, and a murder before he even moves into his new office—and it’s all downhill from there.
Big Will Williams is the new police commissioner. He heads up a group called the Coterie that meets for breakfast twice a week. It consists of active and retired police officers with valuable skills. Think of the Justice League but with half of the heroes on Medicare. The very night of Will’s appointment, a protest takes place in front of City Hall, one that does not look at all spontaneous. José Diaz is shot dead, and a police cadet may have killed him, but confusion reigns. A key man in the Coterie is Harry Doyle, a retired police detective who is now “doing that Magnum, P.I. thing.” Will enlists the private eye to investigate the killing, hoping to clear that worthy cadet, Elijah Washington, of any wrongdoing. Then there is a cold case at issue. Mayor Colin Carter’s wife, Jennifer, was murdered years ago. Harry looks into that case again during the course of the protest investigation. It turns out that Diaz was involved in a counterfeiting scheme with other criminals, namely Iggy Hernandez and Troy Gilbert. All three were on the city payroll in what were obviously sinecures. Through dogged and inspired police work, the heroes hope to bring a remaining malefactor to justice and solve the Jennifer Carter case. Adams does a good job here. He seems to be well acquainted with police procedures. The detectives’ breaking down of Hernandez is masterfully described, and the teacher-student dynamic of crusty Doyle and the young Washington is well handled. Dialogue is sometimes a bit stiff, with verbs that are sort of Tom Swift–ian, but somehow the author convinces readers that these guys really are straight shooters without making them into Boy Scouts. In these days, when the police are getting a lot of justifiable and invalid criticism, Adams’ tale is refreshing.
A well-crafted whodunit with an engaging cast and ambiance.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 355
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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