Buffa writes with authority but not economy, with little sense of character or suspense. He tells us how special and...
Criminal defense attorney Joseph Antonelli returns (The Legacy, 2002, etc.), in a fifth legal thriller as pretentious and plodding as its predecessors.
The murder of incandescent cinema beauty Mary Margaret Flanders saddens Hollywood, and the subsequent arrest of her husband, high-powered filmmaker Stanley Roth, turns the sadness to shock and scandal. Acclaimed defender Antonelli (who narrates) takes the case because of his admittedly romantic fascination with the deceased. The charismatic Roth, a generation older than his wife, transformed her from housewife and mother Marian Walsh into the three-named superstar—echoing Citizen Kane, a film that’s obsesses Roth. He’s written Blue Zephyr (the name of his studio), a screenplay that echoes both the Welles classic and his own life, thereby making certain Hollywood colleagues nervous. Antonelli interviews some of these—aging leading men Louis Griffin and Walker Bradley, and studio financial genius Michael Wirthlin—as well as Marian’s gentle first husband, Paul Ehrlich, without getting any closer to the mystery. Mary was found floating facedown, naked, with her throat cut, in the pool of the Roth estate. The only evidence again Roth is his bloody clothing, found in a laundry hamper. At the trial (it dominates the book’s last half), tenacious but otherwise unexceptional prosecuting attorney Annabelle Van Roten tries to paint both Roth and Antonelli as media whores. Her key witness is the Mark Fuhrman–like LAPD detective Richard Crenshaw, who found the bloody clothes and had once answered a domestic disturbance call at the Roth home—and, naturally, has a hot screenplay in his pocket. Antonelli gets closer to Roth than he ever intended or desired, becoming the confidante of the increasingly isolated mogul and almost having an affair with Roth’s amanuensis, Julie Evans. Roth even entrusts him with a copy of Blue Zephyr, unread by anyone else.
Buffa writes with authority but not economy, with little sense of character or suspense. He tells us how special and brilliant his characters are but doesn’t convey it in his prose.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-399-15034-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2003
Too much psychobabble, technobabble, and envirobabble, yet the appeal of the young sleuths (smart, funny, tough) almost...
A cunning serial killer plays devilish mind games with his would-be captors—and what else is new?
Not much. Well, he does have this penchant for pluralizing. That is, he grabs his young women in pairs. Why pairs? He uses corpse one for the planting of clues sufficient to allow law enforcement—if law enforcement is astute enough—to find corpse two alive. “Eco-Killer,” he’s been tabbed because in addition to his passion for gamesmanship, he seems to have an ongoing love-hate relationship with the environment. From Georgia, scene of the first killings, we shift to Virginia, where Special Agent Mac McCormack of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has been on the case from the outset. He’s been directed to Virginia by a barrage of enigmatic phone calls from someone who claims to know how the serial killer’s sly and twisted mind works. In Quantico, a training ground for FBI agents as well as for US Marines, Mac meets fledgling feebie Kimberly Quincy, daughter of former agent Pierce Quincy, famous throughout the service for his legendary exploits as a profiler. When the Eco-Killer strikes again, Quincy and his p.i. partner Lorraine Conner, mainstays of the series, (The Next Accident, 2001, etc.), are called in to consult, but the case really belongs to the captivating Kimberly and hunkish Mac (with their bods for sex and brains for high-powered detecting). Convinced there’s a chance to save a life if they can manage to solve the killer’s puzzle in time, the two desperately seek clues from botanists, biologists, entomologists, and a variety of other analysts. Something from here, something from there, and at last they can make the guess that plunges them deep into Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park, where the game plays out to a fiery end.
Too much psychobabble, technobabble, and envirobabble, yet the appeal of the young sleuths (smart, funny, tough) almost saves the day.Pub Date: July 15, 2003
ISBN: 0-553-80252-6
Page Count: 325
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2003
A treasure trove of Victoriana, especially for foodies. More history than mystery but a truly delightful read.
A split-second decision is life-changing in this stand-alone Victorian-era mystery from Bowen (Love and Death Among the Cheetahs, 2019, etc.).
Isabella Waverly’s father is an aristocrat estranged from his family who’s fallen so far in the world that he sent his oldest daughter out to work as a servant at 15. Her only joy is learning to cook. When a girl is run over by an omnibus before her eyes, Bella automatically picks up an envelope the dead girl had been clutching. The envelope contains an invitation to apply for an under-cook position at Buckingham Palace that very day. Introducing herself as Helen Barton, Bella snags the job. She hides her new position from Louisa, the younger sister who’s marrying the son of a well-off family. She struggles to immerse herself in the persona of a girl from Yorkshire, explaining her upper-class accent by saying her father was a gentleman. The only fly in the ointment is the appearance of Helen’s brother, who blackmails her into finding a job for him, too. Bella’s passion for cooking and her work ethic soon endear her to the mostly male staff. Queen Victoria, who has an enormous appetite for rich foods, so enjoys Bella’s scones that she personally asks her to make them every day. When her majesty travels to Nice, Bella goes along and gets to put her knowledge of French to use. She develops a semiromantic friendship with the head chef at the hotel, which was built especially for the queen. Indeed, her life seems idyllic until Count Wilhelm, the betrothed of Princess Sophie, dies, ostensibly from a poisoned mushroom Bella bought in a local market. Now she must juggle cooking and a suddenly active love life as she searches for a way to end her predicament.
A treasure trove of Victoriana, especially for foodies. More history than mystery but a truly delightful read.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5420-0825-9
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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