Clues from the past and a wide cast of possible killers make this game worth the candle.
A spent bullet lodged in a porch leads an amateur detective on a wild ride to solving a cold case.
Whitney Whitaker Flynn and her cousin Buck have taken a break from their house-flipping partnership to work for Whitaker Woodworking, the firm run by Buck’s father, Roger, who’s about to begin a major job reinventing a boarding school that’s been closed since 1982 as a senior-living facility. Whitney’s especially intrigued by a large Victorian mansion on the property that was once the headmaster’s home. The house looks bad outside but is remarkably well preserved inside, complete with valuable antique furniture. While looking around, Whitney notices a splintered porch post and digs out a bullet. She learns that the school’s last headmaster, Dr. Irving Finster, and his wife, Rosie, were discovered shot dead in what the police believed to be a murder-suicide, though they never closed the case. After talking things over with Buck, she offers to buy the house from Troy Loflin, the developer who’s hired Whitaker Woodworking. Once the offer is accepted, the cousins set about executing their plan to turn the place into a boutique hotel. As they work on the project, Whitney becomes more and more fascinated with the Finsters’ story. She gets support from her police detective husband, Collin, who knows that she often comes up with clues other people miss. Along with her research, Whitney talks with several people who either worked at the school or were students there. The Finsters, it turns out, were liked by many people but not by everyone. Whitney’s snooping makes her a danger to a killer who wants the past left alone.
Clues from the past and a wide cast of possible killers make this game worth the candle.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781250359322
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.
Lt. Eve Dallas’ 63rd futuristic case is less a whodunit than a manhunt for an unusually sympathetic killer.
Thirteen years ago, way back in 2048, scientific genius Steve Redman—father of the Banner-Wyst corporation’s Rainmaker Project—narrowly escaped death in a gas explosion that killed his pregnant wife and infant son and 200 other residents of their New York City apartment building the night before he planned to report his suspicions about the company to the FBI. Now the bill is coming due for Banner-Wyst. The first death to be discovered is that of Lawrence Chu, Redman’s colleague and trusted friend, whose tenure as director of bioengineering science ends when he’s beaten to death. For quite a while, Dallas and her partner, Det. Delia Peabody, know less about this mystery than their readers do. But when Ezra Dent, a consultant to Banner-Wyst who worked with Redman and Chu back in the day, is murdered in exactly the same ferocious way, Dallas and Peabody, with help from Roarke, Dallas’ tech-billionaire husband, promptly put the pieces together and determine who they’re looking for. The search for Redman, who went AWOL from his hospital bed without a trace six years ago, has its own challenges. So does Dallas’ attempt to get cooperation from partners Calvin Banner and Jacob Wyst, who are clearly in the crosshairs of a killer who seems a lot less monstrous than they are. If the breaks in the case are suspiciously convenient in arriving, readers can pride themselves on taking sides against a mega-corporation whose self-avowed ecological saintliness is undermined by its leaders’ underhanded dealing.
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414564
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.
It takes a quirky sleuth to solve a baffling closed-door murder.
The author himself or, more accurately, some version of him, walks the reader through a “gruesome murder” that occurred in a rural farming village. At the center of the crime is the wealthy Ichiyanagi family, including the widow Itoko and her five children. The “heinous crime” occurs in the evening after the festive wedding of eldest son Kenzo to schoolteacher Katsuko. Yokomizo, part narrator and part raconteur, liberally shares digressions such as the fact that his favorite British author is A.A. Milne, who wrote The Red House Mystery as well as the books about Winnie-the-Pooh. Written in 1946 but set in 1937 before the devastation of World War II, this is the first novel featuring Kosuke Kindaichi, the legendary detective who appeared in more than 70 stories by Yokomizo. If Yokomizo is the Japanese Agatha Christie, Kindaichi may seem the Japanese Hercule Poirot—although actually, given his unkempt hair and apparently distracted manner, he’s more a cross between Poirot and Columbo. Shrewdly, his entrance is delayed until midway through the novel, after the police have stalled and both the family and the reader are anxious for a solution. The narrator’s garrulous charm, in a mystery long on logistics and forensic clues but short on detailed character portraits or extended interactions, is a key to the novel’s success, leavening the more intricate pieces of the puzzle. Armchair detectives will welcome the helpful character list that precedes the story.
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781805336549
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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