Actresses must eat, especially if they’re six feet tall, so when it becomes clear that Victoria Bowering isn’t going to be cast as the sixth Spice Girl, she agrees to take a job as the day bartender at Kerry McAleer’s pub. The timing, of course, couldn’t be better. In her first day on the job, Vic gets harassed by McAleer’s heavily Irish clientele, tipped with a baggie of cocaine by an especially appreciative patron, stalked (or so she’s convinced) by a psychopathic theater tech she thought she’d left safely back in Maine at the end of Ovation by Death (1996), and dropped into the middle of another mystery when she discovers the corpse of Dave, her predecessor on the day shift. (The appearance of Dave in McAleer’s walk-in refrigerator is so timely, in fact, that you wonder how Vic could’ve shared the day shift with him if he hadn’t conveniently OD’d.) More troubles await—a war among the local Irish bars will bring a visit from the Board of Health, a stink bomb, and a full-scale riot—but it’s all filtered through Vic’s patter, which presses so hard to be cute and disillusioned that it’s more wearying than funny. Despite all the skullduggery, and a surprisingly ingenious bunch of criminals, Vic’s fourth packs no more punch than a Shirley Temple.
Pub Date: April 16, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-18128-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1998
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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