Nobody is entirely what they seem in this series kickoff, leaving plenty of scope to suss out the killer.
The Asquiths—descendants of the family that founded Yorkshire’s Ravensea Castle in 1138—have decided to transform their ancestral home into a small hotel. Lethal complications ensue.
After overcoming bureaucratic hurdles and securing permission over the objections of meddlesome neighbor Hilda Dibble, the hotel opens amid heightened tensions, all narrated by herbalist Nora Asquith. Nora’s father serves as the official historian and greeter, while her older sister, gifted actress Tamsyn, joins the team to assist. Her brother, Will, endeavoring to establish his mead-making business, comps the stay of Lorna and Gavin Cargill, who own a string of wine shops. The guest list also includes the charming birdwatcher Brian Taylor and the equally alluring Finlay Cole, accompanied by Lady, his French bulldog. The initial stages of the hotel’s operation are tranquil enough, until Nora’s early-morning foray into the garden reveals a gruesome discovery: Hilda Dibble’s lifeless body. Finlay promptly assumes control, announcing that he’s a detective inspector newly assigned to the area and staying at the castle until his rental is ready. Ironically, Hilda’s demise may inadvertently fulfill her aspirations of scuppering the hotel. The case becomes intricately woven, involving a possible murder that was previously dismissed as an accident. A friend of the Cargills offers to purchase the castle and incorporate it into his hotel chain. Rumors of smuggling and other illicit activities persist, and the sisters stumble upon cases of wine concealed in a sea cave. As potential suspects, the Asquiths employ every resource, even the castle ghost, to unravel the mystery.
Nobody is entirely what they seem in this series kickoff, leaving plenty of scope to suss out the killer.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370051
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
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 fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.
A 16-year-old savant uses his Groundhog Day gift to solve his grandfather’s murder.
Nishizawa’s compulsively readable puzzle opens with the discovery of the victim, patriarch Reijiro Fuchigami, sprawled on a futon in the attic of his elegant mansion, where his family has gathered for a consequential announcement about his estate. The weapon seems to be a copper vase lying nearby. Given this setup, the novel might have proceeded as a traditional whodunit but for two delightful features. The first is the ebullient narration of Fuchigami’s youngest grandson, Hisataro, thrust into the role of an investigator with more dedication than finesse. The second is Nishizawa’s clever premise: The 16-year-old Hisataro has lived ever since birth with a condition that occasionally has him falling into a time loop that he calls "the Trap," replaying the same 24 hours of his life exactly nine times before moving on. And, of course, the murder takes place on the first day of one of these loops. Can he solve the murder before the cycle is played out? His initial strategies—never leaving his grandfather’s side, focusing on specific suspects, hiding in order to observe them all—fall frustratingly short. Hisataro’s comical anxiety rises with every failed attempt to identify the culprit. It’s only when he steps back and examines all the evidence that he discovers the solution. First published in 1995, this is the first of Nishizawa’s novels to be translated into English. As for Hisataro, he ultimately concludes that his condition is not a burden but a gift: “Time’s spiral never ends.”
A fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.Pub Date: July 29, 2025
ISBN: 9781805335436
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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