Flawed but effective.
An uneven mystery about a murdered writer researching the suspicious death of her own mother.
When Gretchen Waters dies, it appears to be a tragic accident: She falls down steep library steps after a reading of her memoir Tammyland. Her best friend, Jamie, a ripely pregnant journalist, is asked to become Gretchen’s literary executor, which means she’ll be organizing the vast quantities of notebooks, audio recordings and computer files that were to be Gretchen’s next memoir. In this new memoir (Tammyland dealt with a divorce-inspired road trip merged with anecdotes of country music’s tragic divas), Gretchen was focusing on the sad circumstances of her own childhood. Shelly was a teenager when she became pregnant with Gretchen, so her older sister, Linda, and her husband raised the baby. Gretchen would visit her mother on the weekends, until one day, Shelly was found beaten to death. Shelly’s drunken boyfriend was acquitted, but everyone in the small New Hampshire town still thinks he did it. Jamie begins by simply organizing all the material, but when her house is broken into (the only things stolen are related to Gretchen) and it becomes clear that Gretchen’s death was not an accident, she becomes an unlikely detective, attempting to piece together the last days of Gretchen’s life. Arsenault builds the framework of a taut mystery—the present crime is directly related to the past—but the novel’s pace is frequently slowed by excerpts from Tammyland and, to a lesser extent, Gretchen’s field notes and rough drafts of the new memoir. Though Arsenault is playing with the idea of constructed realities, of multiple versions of truth, much is peripheral to the mystery and feels like a drag on the excitement being built as Jamie gets closer to the truth, and the murderer gets closer to Jamie.
Flawed but effective.Pub Date: July 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-210310-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.
Too much free time leads a New Hampshire bookseller into yet another case of murder.
Now that Tricia Miles has Pixie Poe and Mr. Everett practically running her bookstore, Haven’t Got a Clue, she finds herself at loose ends. Her wealthy sister, Angelica, who in the guise of Nigela Ricita has invested heavily in making Stoneham a bookish tourist attraction, is entering the amateur competition for the Great Booktown Bake-Off. So Tricia, who’s recently taken up baking as a hobby, decides to join her and spends a lot of time looking for the perfect cupcake recipe. A visit to another bookstore leaves Tricia witnessing a nasty argument between owner Joyce Widman and next-door neighbor Vera Olson over the trimming of tree branches that hang over Joyce’s yard—also overheard by new town police officer Cindy Pearson. After Tricia accepts Joyce’s offer of some produce from her garden, they find Vera skewered by a pitchfork, and when Police Chief Grant Baker arrives, Joyce is his obvious suspect. Ever since Tricia moved to Stoneham, the homicide rate has skyrocketed (Poisoned Pages, 2018, etc.), and her history with Baker is fraught. She’s also become suspicious about the activities at Pets-A-Plenty, the animal shelter where Vera was a dedicated volunteer. Tricia’s offered her expertise to the board, but president Toby Kingston has been less than welcoming. With nothing but baking on her calendar, Tricia has plenty of time to investigate both the murder and her vague suspicions about the shelter. Plenty of small-town friendships and rivalries emerge in her quest for the truth.
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0272-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
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