A run-of-the-mill but entertaining whodunit.
In Brown’s (A Devil in the Drone, 2013, etc.) straightforward detective story, a private investigator must solve a former CIA agent’s murder in Charleston, South Carolina.
Harriet Bennett is an ex-assistant director at the CIA who recently quit her job to move South with her partner and teach at The Citadel, a military college. When she’s found dead in a Charleston marsh, it appears to be an open-and-shut kayaking accident, but the agency sends gumshoe John “Stick” LeMaster to investigate nonetheless. Signs soon point to Harriet being murdered, and her ties to communism, the Venezuelan Catholic Church and a failed coup against Hugo Chavez become more than just highlights of her former career. Her roommate, the sexually flexible Prissy St. Martin Snipes, along with Prissy’s father, Gumpy, and stepmother Leonore, aid Stick in his search for the killer. Like many other fictional private eyes, Stick’s a smooth-talking loner who’s fond of fine liquor, and he often finds himself the target of women’s flirtations. However, he isn’t a particularly brilliant detective, or even a particularly compelling lead character; more than once, he misses seemingly obvious opportunities to advance the case. Stick’s background as a former officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, who saw action in Iraq, might have made him truly unique, but despite the story’s Citadel setting, it’s a minor detail. However, his musings on Charleston life, from “She Crab soup” to the so-called Charleston uniform of blue blazer, tan slacks, blue button-down shirt and cordovan penny loafers, paint a warm picture of Southern living. They also give the story an amusing fish-out-of-water angle, aided by the appearance of Gumpy, a comical, if a bit stereotypical, born-and-bred South Carolina lawyer. This simple mystery may not stick with readers for long after they’ve finished, but it’s a fun, easy way to pass the time at the beach.
A run-of-the-mill but entertaining whodunit.Pub Date: March 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-1494262860
Page Count: 200
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that...
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett (Free Fire, 2007, etc.), once again at the governor’s behest, stalks the wraithlike figure who’s targeting elk hunters for death.
Frank Urman was taken down by a single rifle shot, field-dressed, beheaded and hung upside-down to bleed out. (You won’t believe where his head eventually turns up.) The poker chip found near his body confirms that he’s the third victim of the Wolverine, a killer whose animus against hunters is evidently being whipped up by anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore. The potential effects on the state’s hunting revenues are so calamitous that Governor Spencer Rulon pulls out all the stops, and Pickett is forced to work directly with Wyoming Game and Fish Director Randy Pope, the boss who fired him from his regular job in Saddlestring District. Three more victims will die in rapid succession before Joe is given a more congenial colleague: Nate Romanowski, the outlaw falconer who pledged to protect Joe’s family before he was taken into federal custody. As usual in this acclaimed series, the mystery is slight and its solution eminently guessable long before it’s confirmed by testimony from an unlikely source. But the people and scenes and enduring conflicts that lead up to that solution will stick with you for a long time.
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that periodically release the tension between the scheming adversaries.Pub Date: May 20, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-15488-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
It's clearly Cat’s meow, and if you respond positively to her tempestuous carryings-on, then you'll probably forgive Iles...
A serial killer who puts the bite on victims is the villainous center of a long, long psychothriller, as southern Gothic as it gets.
Dr. Catherine (Cat) Ferry is a forensic odontologist, which is to say “an expert on human teeth and the damage they can do.” In four cases enlivening the New Orleans crime scene, however, the damage done is mostly posthumous, the victims having been snuffed first, gnawed on afterward. Cat loves being called in to help NOPD investigations. She also loves a hunky homicide detective named Sean Regan. At some point, Sean says, he will leave his wife and kids for her, but it’s a point of diminishing probability. Hard to really blame Sean, feckless as he is, since Cat’s not only bipolar, alcoholic and promiscuous but also apparently content to remain that way. And then, leaning over the chewed-upon corpse of Arthur LeGendre, she has a panic attack that amounts to an epiphany. Something’s wrong, she intuits, and makes a beeline for home in Natchez, Miss. Somehow, she has sensed a connection between the New Orleans murders and dark doings in her own past. Twenty years ago, when Cat was eight, her daddy was shot to death. A mysterious assailant, grandpapa Kirkland has insisted through the years, but Cat has always found that difficult to accept. Now, in her old bedroom in the family manse, she unexpectedly discovers forensic evidence that supports her skepticism—and discovers as well gleanings of a terrible secret. In the meantime, back in New Orleans, the investigation has heated up, and here too it seems Cat had it right. Murder in New Orleans and murder in Natchez are connected by the same kind of terrible secret.
It's clearly Cat’s meow, and if you respond positively to her tempestuous carryings-on, then you'll probably forgive Iles (The Footprints of God, 2003, etc.) his unabashed quest for bestsellerdom.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-3470-7
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2005
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