A seemingly straightforward crime story that becomes more enticing as it goes on.
Keller offers a legal procedural centered on a murder on a snowy morning in Canada.
It’s 2010, and 25-year-old Charley Ewanuschuk lives in the basement of a partially built home in Calgary, making what little money he can as a day laborer. Early one morning, he sees a sports car from his shelter, stuck in the snow. A woman named Natalie Peterson stumbles out of the vehicle, pursued by a man who soon catches her and drags her out of sight. Later, the man flees, and Charley finds Natalie, in the snow, dead; when a tow truck comes, Charley panics and hides. Due to his proximity to the crime, Charley becomes the top suspect in Natalie’s murder; the actual perpetrator appears to be Jason Young, “the only son of a wealthy, powerful family.” Jason, it turns out, had brought Natalie back to his home and kept her there, after she’d performed as a stripper at a bachelor party. Charley seeks the assistance of young lawyer Brian Cox, who’s skeptical of Charley’s story; however, he learns that the apparent drifter’s background is more complex than he thought. Right from the get-go, Keller makes readers aware of all aspects of the crime—or so it seems. This includes not only what Charley sees, but also Jason’s actions, including his call to his rich father for help; the narrative even includes Natalie’s perspective. Although information is often repeated (“Looks like someone’s been squatting in the basement,” one policeman explains to another, although readers already know this), this narrative strategy often shows how Natalie’s death isn’t as simple as it initially appears. Later, as a trial ensues and more evidence enters the picture, everything slowly comes into focus while keeping readers engaged. By the end, Brian finds himself “not knowing if the justice system had failed or worked.”
A seemingly straightforward crime story that becomes more enticing as it goes on.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2012
ISBN: 9798345031001
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
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. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.
When a man accused of rape turns up dead, an Early American town seeks justice amid rumors and controversy.
Lawhon’s fifth work of historical fiction is inspired by the true story and diaries of midwife Martha Ballard of Hallowell, Maine, a character she brings to life brilliantly here. As Martha tells her patient in an opening chapter set in 1789, “You need not fear….In all my years attending women in childbirth, I have never lost a mother.” This track record grows in numerous compelling scenes of labor and delivery, particularly one in which Martha has to clean up after the mistakes of a pompous doctor educated at Harvard, one of her nemeses in a town that roils with gossip and disrespect for women’s abilities. Supposedly, the only time a midwife can testify in court is regarding paternity when a woman gives birth out of wedlock—but Martha also takes the witness stand in the rape case against a dead man named Joshua Burgess and his living friend Col. Joseph North, whose role as judge in local court proceedings has made the victim, Rebecca Foster, reluctant to make her complaint public. Further complications are numerous: North has control over the Ballard family's lease on their property; Rebecca is carrying the child of one of her rapists; Martha’s son was seen fighting with Joshua Burgess on the day of his death. Lawhon weaves all this into a richly satisfying drama that moves suspensefully between childbed, courtroom, and the banks of the Kennebec River. The undimmed romance between 40-something Martha and her husband, Ephraim, adds a racy flair to the proceedings. Knowing how rare the quality of their relationship is sharpens the intensity of Martha’s gaze as she watches the romantic lives of her grown children unfold. As she did with Nancy Wake in Code Name Hélène (2020), Lawhon creates a stirring portrait of a real-life heroine and, as in all her books, includes an endnote with detailed background.
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780385546874
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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