A case of dognapping distracts public defender Gordy Seegerman from rehearsals as he again readies himself and his band of fellow worshippers to meet the man of their dreams, Barry Manilow.
San Francisco Bay Area lawyer/musician Seegerman, the big-hearted hero of Misdemeanor Man (2004), still unmarried, still devoted to the artistry of Bette Midler’s onetime pianist, is again preparing his band for a possible meeting with his idol in Vegas. But there are complications. Maeve O’Connell, the band’s bad-tempered, middle-aged, Irish, lesbian vocalist is laid up in the last weeks of a surprise pregnancy, forcing Gordy to enlist the services of ex-girlfriend Silvie, the next best interpreter of Manilow ballads in Santa Rita. He’s still got a thing for her, but it’s unrequited and she’s married. And Seegerman still hasn’t gotten tested for the early onset Alzheimer’s that is erasing his father’s personality. The work intruding on the world of music is the misdemeanor mischief of Marcus Manners, superstar quarterback of the local public high school who has been charged with the theft of the canine mascot belonging to archrival Saint Illuminatus, enraging powerful alumni—including the crooked cop who found the missing dog behind Marcus’s apartment and the crabby judge who will try the case. And then the middle-aged heiress from whose estate the dog was stolen and who may have had a thing for Marcus (although Maeve swears she’s gay) takes three bullets, and Marcus, who was seen with her and who has blood on his sneakers, is the lead suspect in her murder. Gordy needs considerable help from the talented boys in his band to sort out clues that lead back to a big drug deal in the ’80s and involve Marcus’s foster father, a prominent black politician in a town that is ready to riot over the charges against their young sports hero.
Overlong, and the constant references to Manilow songs will result in persistent, uninvited theme music for readers of a certain age. Still, Seegerman remains likable.Pub Date: May 9, 2005
ISBN: 1-58234-506-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2005
Categories: GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE
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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. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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Lady detective Bridie Devine searches for a missing child and finds much more than she bargained for.
Bridie Devine is no stranger to the seedy underworld of Victorian London. An accomplished detective with medical training, she sometimes helps the police by examining bodies to determine the cause of death. Bridie recently failed to find a lost child, and when she’s approached about another missing child, the daughter of Sir Edmund Berwick, she isn’t enthusiastic about taking on the case. But Christabel Berwick is no ordinary child. Sir Edmund has hidden Christabel away her whole life and wants Bridie to believe this is an ordinary kidnapping. Bridie does a little digging and learns that Christabel isn’t his daughter so much as his prized specimen. Sir Edmund believes Christabel is a “merrow,” a darker and less romanticized version of a mermaid. Bridie is skeptical, but there are reports of Christabel’s sharp teeth, color-changing eyes, and ability to drown people on dry land. Given that Bridie’s new companion is a ghost who refuses to tell her why he’s haunting her, Bridie might want to open her mind a bit. There’s a lot going on in this singular novel, and none of it pretty. Bridie’s London is soaked with mud and blood, and her past is nightmarish at best. Kidd (Mr. Flood’s Last Resort, 2018, etc.) is an expert at setting a supernatural mood perfect for ghosts and merrows, but her human villains make them seem mundane by comparison. With so much detail and so many clever, Dickensian characters, readers might petition Kidd to give Bridie her own series.
Creepy, violent, and propulsive; a standout gothic mystery.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2128-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
Categories: GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | LITERARY FICTION | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | HISTORICAL MYSTERY
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