Nothing new here, but Brown keeps the parade of obligatory red herrings moving along smartly until his hero finds just the...
A summons to Suffolk in search of a stolen painting turns into something considerably darker for thriller writer/detective Donald Langham.
As Neston Manor, Lord Teddy Elsmere’s mortgaged estate, crumbles around him in the winter of 1956, he still prides himself on a few choice possessions. So he’s not best pleased when one of them, Gainsborough’s Suffolk Pastoral, goes missing. It’s particularly awkward that there’s no evidence of a break-in and that the frame has vanished along with the painting—two hints to local DI Montgomery that Elsmere may have spirited away his own prize for the insurance. Of course he hasn’t, huffs the widowed aristocrat. But he’s even unhappier to think that the thief might be one of his tenants or guests: his son and heir, Dudley Mariner; Dudley’s strapping fiancee, sculptress Esmeralda Bellamy; aspiring author Rebecca Miles; Patrick Verlinden, a Dutch flier who served with the RAF in the war; or longtime resident Maj. William Rutherford, whose financial situation is even more dire than his host’s. Brought down to Neston by his literary agent and Elsmere’s friend, Charles Elder, Langham settles in for several soothing rounds of Q-and-A with all the suspects except Verlinden, who’s disappeared. He’s as surprised as anyone when a chance discovery he makes among Verlinden’s effects leads him to the missing painting and when the missing man turns up as dead as Gainsborough. Verlinden’s murder provides the cue for Langham’s increasingly pointed questions to begin excavating the secrets, motives, and clues Brown (Murder Takes a Turn, 2018, etc.) has distributed generously throughout the household and the nearby village. Some of these are relevant, some aren’t, but they’re all more or less equally interesting until the very last one, which reveals unsuspected depths at Neston Manor.
Nothing new here, but Brown keeps the parade of obligatory red herrings moving along smartly until his hero finds just the cottage he and his wife have been looking for in a neighboring Suffolk village. Whew.Pub Date: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8852-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A treat for aficionados of shopkeeper-sleuth cozies.
Notch another corpse for Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree (Death by Chocolate Malted Milkshake, 2019, etc.).
After slowly working its way out of the red, Jake’s sweet shop is now one of the linchpins of the revitalized business district of Eastport, Maine. But she and her partner, Ellie White, are less than thrilled when Henry Hadlyme, star of the food tourism show Eat This! offers to include The Chocolate Moose on his podcast Eating on the Edge! which highlights off-the-beaten-track purveyors of New England fare. Hadlyme seems a little slimy to Jake and Ellie, and his interest in their treats seems less than sincere. But when he calls Jake “missy,” that’s it; the two chocolateers boot him out of their shop. He comes back with a vengeance—or at least, his corpse does. It turns up in the basement of the Moose with a stuffed parrot pinned to its shoulder and a cutlass jabbed through its chest in a gruesome nod to the ongoing Eastport Pirate Festival. Jake would love to present police chief Bob Arnold with a convenient alternative to charging her with Hadlyme’s murder. And there’s no dearth of suspects: A surreptitious trip to the Eat This! production trailer lets Jake know that pretty much everyone involved with the show hated Hadlyme. But finding out exactly who croaked the curmudgeon—and offering the chief some proof—proves to be a challenge to Jake’s and Ellie’s ingenuity, health, and welfare.
A treat for aficionados of shopkeeper-sleuth cozies.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1134-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An expert juggling act that ends with not one but two intercut trials. More, please.
His Clifton Chronicles (This Was a Man, 2017, etc.) complete, the indefatigable Archer launches a new series that follows a well-born police officer from his first assignment to (spoiler alert) his appointment as commissioner of the Metropolitan Police some volumes down the road.
William Warwick may have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he’s done everything he can to declare his independence from his father, Sir Julian Warwick QC. When William, fresh out of King’s College with a degree in art history, announces his intention to enroll in Hendon Police College, his father realizes that he’ll have to count on William’s older sister, Grace, to carry on the family’s tradition in Her Majesty’s courts. Instead, guileless William patrols the streets of Lambeth until a chance remark lands him on DCI Bruce Lamont’s Art and Antiques unit under the watchful eye of Cmdr. Jack Hawksby. No fewer than four cases await his attention: the forger who signs first editions with the names of their famous authors; a series of even more accomplished forgeries of old masters paintings; a well-organized series of thefts of artworks by a gang whose leader prefers selling them back to the companies who’ve insured them and often don’t even report the thefts to the police; and a mysterious series of purchases of century-old silver by one Kevin Carter. His investigations take William across the path, and then into the bed, of Beth Rainsford, a research assistant at the Fitzmolean gallery, still reeling seven years after a priceless Rembrandt was stolen from its collection, most likely by landowner and self-styled farmer Miles Faulkner. As if to prevent William from getting even a moment’s sleep in between rounds of detection and decorous coupling, Beth unwillingly drags William into a fifth case, a 2-year-old murder whose verdict she has every reason to doubt. One of these cases will bring William up against Grace, whose withering cross-examination of him on the witness stand is a special highlight.
An expert juggling act that ends with not one but two intercut trials. More, please.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-20076-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
PROFILES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
