Given the challenge of matching her first novel’s gorgeous premise, Cosimano does a remarkable job. What next?
Fresh from a debut in which she kept getting offered money to kill people who then fortuitously died, novelist Finlay Donovan goes another round with murder most absurd.
Somebody besides Finn must be unhappy with her ex, sod farmer Steven Donovan, because a message-board poster identifying herself only as FedUp broadly hints that she’d pay $100,000 to anyone who’d dispose of him. As Finn looks on in virtual horror, another poster, EasyClean, accepts the proposition. Run ragged as she already is by the usual domestic problems—caring for her two small children, juggling hot law student Julian Baker and Nicholas Anthony, the Fairfax County detective who’s still interested in her despite what she put him through in Finlay Donovan Is Killing It (2021), struggling to get started on her next suspense novel—Finn tries to rescue Steven, who deserves execration but not execution, by hiring a teenage network expert named Cam to identify EasyClean. When Cam comes up empty, the only other thing Finn can think of is to volunteer to do the hit herself for half the price. Unfortunately, she makes her cut-rate offer using a public Wi-Fi connection, exposing herself and her nanny/sidekick, endlessly resourceful accounting student Veronica Ruiz, to all manner of perils. The discovery that the message board is secretly owned by Feliks Zhirov, the mobster Finn’s last adventure ended up sending to prison, just increases the riotous complications. Long after everything has apparently spiraled out of control or even comprehension, the author springs one last revelation that, if it doesn’t pull everything together, goes a long way toward justifying the bumpy ride.
Given the challenge of matching her first novel’s gorgeous premise, Cosimano does a remarkable job. What next?Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-2502-4218-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 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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