Snappy but routine work from an author who has yet to establish his distinctive voice amid the crowded field of the...
Having vanquished a killer with a taste for human flesh (Grendel’s Game, 2015), Chief Superintendent Walther Ekman, of the Weltenborg police, takes on a human-trafficking ring with international roots.
Driven beyond endurance by her regimen of forced sex, kidnapped dental hygienist Lynni Dahlin finally squeezes out a tiny window of her improbable downtown-apartment prison and escapes. Her freedom is short-lived, for she immediately plunges from an icy roof to her death as Ekman and his wife, Ingbritt, an author of children’s books, sit in a restaurant across the street. His dinner ruined, Ekman resolves to get to the bottom of a death that can’t easily be labeled accident, suicide, or murder but is certainly suspicious. So suspicious, in fact, that Ekman’s crew promptly links the Keeper, the trafficker who’s been doing a thriving business supplying captive women from abroad for a clientele willing to pay serious money for submissive sex partners who aren’t just pretending to be terrified, to both a vigorous drug-smuggling operation patriarch Fayyad Joumari is running out of Morocco and a battle for power in the boardroom of the Sodra Sverige Bank. Mauritzson handles the procedural details of the investigation, from the grinding forensics to the obligatory power struggles between Ekman and his colleagues, with authority, and the story moves along briskly from the opening scene. Considering the loathsome nature of the crimes, though, there’s a surprisingly short store of either urgency or moral outrage; a copycat killing only muddles the investigation; and a trip to Morocco intended as the tale’s climax spirals into an unpersuasive mixture of quasi-military abduction and sightseeing.
Snappy but routine work from an author who has yet to establish his distinctive voice amid the crowded field of the Scandinavian procedural.Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-57962-496-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
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