A fine mystery with satisfying characters that powerfully evokes the privations of the period.
1796. Abduction, murder, and sundry domestic problems keep a Maine weaver too busy to pursue the trade that feeds his family.
Will Rees has no more ambitious plan than to live quietly with his wife, Lydia, now that they've returned to their farm after having sheltered with the Shakers when Will was falsely accused of murder and Lydia of witchcraft (The Shaker Murders, 2019, etc.). But Constable Rouge and his midwife sister, Bernadette, end that plan when they beg for help in finding Bernadette’s daughter, Hortense, another midwife who never returned home after her last delivery, leaving her cart sans horse on the side of the road near Gray Hill. After volunteers search for her and Will uses his tracking skills to discover that Hortense was almost certainly taken by two men who also stole the horse, a faint cry leads him to the missing girl, barefoot and lightly dressed. Will and his cart horse, Hannibal, struggle through a snowstorm to get Hortense back to the farm, where she awakens screaming in fear. She describes having been taken to a cabin by two boys named Jem and Jake, but Will thinks she’s holding back further information. When his daughter Jerusha is attacked by two lads, Will runs them off. Following a second attempt to kidnap Hortense, Will and Rouge question the closemouthed families who live in the hills. They have little luck until Hortense finally admits that she was taken to care for Sally, the mother of the boys. When the Shaker elders who’ve been sheltering Hortense approach him to solve the murder of a women likely mistaken for her, he and the faithful Hannibal return to the mountains over freezing, snow-blanketed roads into woods that harbor hungry wolves, predators who are kindly compared to the dangerous humans Will encounters.
A fine mystery with satisfying characters that powerfully evokes the privations of the period.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8884-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
You can’t help but chuckle over all the disasters, but in the end the heroine catches her prey.
An Arizona accountant with a penchant for solving murders lands a fishy case.
Sophie "Phee" Kimball might lead a dull life if it weren’t for her mother, Harriet Plunkett, and Harriet’s neurotic Chiweenie, Streetman. As it is, Harriet lives near her daughter in Sun City West and has a wide circle of zany friends who’ve helped Phee solve several mysteries (Molded 4 Murder, 2019, etc.) while she’s been working for Williams Investigations along with her boyfriend, Marshall, a former police officer. While Phee’s visiting Harriet one day, Streetman dashes over to the neighbors’ barbecue grill and unearths a dead body under a tarp. As usual, the overwhelmed local police ask Williams Investigations to help—er, consult. Harriet’s main concern is getting costumes made for the reluctant Streetman, whom she’s entered in a series of contests starting with Halloween and progressing through Thanksgiving, Christmas/Hannukah, and St. Patrick’s Day. One of her friends is an accomplished seamstress who goes all out making gorgeous costumes that will beat an obnoxious lady who looks down on mutts. The dead man is identified as Cameron Tully, a seafood distributor, who was poisoned by the locally ubiquitous sago pine. At the first dog contest, Elaine Meschow has to be rushed to the hospital after she gets a dose of the same thing. The owner of a gourmet dog food company, Elaine is lucky enough to recover. After Streetman takes second place, Harriet’s team redoubles its efforts for the next contest while Phee and Marshall, who are moving into a new place together, continue to hunt for clues. A restaurant holdup and a scheme to use empty houses for hookups for high school kids add to the confusion.
You can’t help but chuckle over all the disasters, but in the end the heroine catches her prey.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2455-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
An undisciplined but powerfully lacerating story, by an author who knows every block of the neighborhood and every hair on...
After five adventures for Boston shamus Patrick Kenzie and his off-again lover Angela Gennaro (Prayers for Rain, 1999, etc.), Lehane tries his hand at a crossover novel that’s as dark as any of Patrick’s cases.
Even the 1975 prologue is bleak. Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus are playing, or fighting, outside Sean’s parents’ house in the Point neighborhood of East Buckingham when a car pulls up, one of the two men inside flashes a badge, and Sean and Jimmy’s friend Dave Boyle gets bundled inside, allegedly to be driven home to his mother for a scolding but actually to get kidnapped. Though Dave escapes after a few days, he never really outlives his ordeal, and 25 years later it’s Jimmy’s turn to join him in hell when his daughter Katie is shot and beaten to death in the wilds of Pen Park, and State Trooper Sean, just returned from suspension, gets assigned to the case. Sean knows that both Dave and Jimmy have been in more than their share of trouble in the past. And he’s got an especially close eye on Jimmy, whose marriage brought him close to the aptly named Savage family and who’s done hard time for robbery. It would be just like Jimmy, Sean knows, to ignore his friend’s official efforts and go after the killer himself. But Sean would be a lot more worried if he knew what Dave’s wife Celeste knows: that hours after catching sight of Katie in the last bar she visited on the night of her death, Dave staggered home covered with somebody else’s blood. Burrowing deep into his three sorry heroes and the hundred ties that bind them unbearably close, Lehane weaves such a spellbinding tale that it’s easy to overlook the ramshackle mystery behind it all.
An undisciplined but powerfully lacerating story, by an author who knows every block of the neighborhood and every hair on his characters’ heads.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2001
ISBN: 0-688-16316-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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