A solid mystery with a skilled protagonist and room for development in the sequel.
In this novel, a young woman’s death is considered a suicide, but to a detective, an audio tape of her demise sounds like murder.
Nick Severs, a former Kansas City street cop and now the first and only police detective in Pine Lake, Colorado, has seen 57 bodies in his life. The 58th is 25-year-old Lisa Benoche. Her death is considered “textbook suicide,” and Brenda, from the coroner’s office, tells Severs that around these parts, “September is not a homicide month.” But Severs has questions. The crime scene is “neat,” as if staged. An audio recording from her smart home device plays back “the sound of a struggle, but there were no signs of a struggle.” Further, as his friend Mike, the victim’s co-worker, tells Severs, “She was smart, pretty, and had a great job….Why would she kill herself?” This will be Severs’ first solo death investigation, and he must navigate the requisite revelations (Mike, who brought the recording to the detective’s attention, turns out to have had an affair with Lisa) and red herrings. Meanwhile, as the case progresses, Severs is haunted by a recurring nightmare of a young boy’s horrific demise. It begins to create tension between him and his beloved girlfriend, Claire (“This wasn’t them. They never fought”). He turns to Sam, a former college friend, now a therapist, who reluctantly agrees to help him “figure out heads or tails of this.” Severs makes an impressive first impression in Chernov’s series opener. The author has a good eye for the procedural portion of the book. As Severs makes his initial rounds of Lisa’s property, he mulls possible pieces of evidence: “It was like trying to reconstruct the plot of one play based on a closet stuffed with props from a dozen.” Chernov also creates a strong sense of place (“Every now and then, a cool breeze rolled through the trees, stirring up the scent of warm cedar”). Nightmares aside, Severs is coolly competent and refreshingly free of the self-inflicted personal demons meant to give such characters a pulse.
A solid mystery with a skilled protagonist and room for development in the sequel.Pub Date: June 28, 2022
ISBN: 9798986329819
Page Count: 361
Publisher: Heathen Press
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.
A 16-year-old savant uses his Groundhog Day gift to solve his grandfather’s murder.
Nishizawa’s compulsively readable puzzle opens with the discovery of the victim, patriarch Reijiro Fuchigami, sprawled on a futon in the attic of his elegant mansion, where his family has gathered for a consequential announcement about his estate. The weapon seems to be a copper vase lying nearby. Given this setup, the novel might have proceeded as a traditional whodunit but for two delightful features. The first is the ebullient narration of Fuchigami’s youngest grandson, Hisataro, thrust into the role of an investigator with more dedication than finesse. The second is Nishizawa’s clever premise: The 16-year-old Hisataro has lived ever since birth with a condition that occasionally has him falling into a time loop that he calls "the Trap," replaying the same 24 hours of his life exactly nine times before moving on. And, of course, the murder takes place on the first day of one of these loops. Can he solve the murder before the cycle is played out? His initial strategies—never leaving his grandfather’s side, focusing on specific suspects, hiding in order to observe them all—fall frustratingly short. Hisataro’s comical anxiety rises with every failed attempt to identify the culprit. It’s only when he steps back and examines all the evidence that he discovers the solution. First published in 1995, this is the first of Nishizawa’s novels to be translated into English. As for Hisataro, he ultimately concludes that his condition is not a burden but a gift: “Time’s spiral never ends.”
A fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.Pub Date: July 29, 2025
ISBN: 9781805335436
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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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