The mystery, with a forgettable killer whose most serious threat against the hero is slashing his tires, gets buried in the...
A curious stand-alone from the creator of Rina Lazarus and Peter Decker (Bone Box, 2017, etc.): a New Mexico teen tracks down clues in the rape and strangling of his older sister three years ago while he faces the pressure and angst common to all high school seniors.
The police have never solved the murder of Ellen Vicksburg. Detective Sam Shanks, of River Remez Homicide, suspected Tim Sanchez, who had a crush on Ellen, and tried to link her death to the work of Billy Ray Barnes, the Albuquerque Demon, to no avail. But Ellen’s brother, Ben, has never given up. He’s still surfing the web for material about similar homicides and meeting regularly with Shanks, who likes the boy but can’t help wishing he’d go away. Ben’s obsessive focus on his sister’s death has naturally taken a toll on his social life, but with the arrival of Dorothy Majors from New York, things seem to take a new turn. Though she’s nominally the girlfriend of football star JD Kirk, Ro reaches out to Ben repeatedly, sympathizing with his loss, taking him seriously in a way his other friends don’t, and signaling that her liaison with JD is more a matter of status and convenience than genuine attraction. As Ben painstakingly gathers information he hopes will identify Ellen’s killer, the turning points in his investigation are consistently linked to pivotal moments in his relationship with Ro: their quarrels, their rapprochements, their debates about the senior prom. The result is a peculiar amalgam of one-quarter amateur detective work and three-quarters high school romance, like a Stephenie Meyer epic with a serial killer substituting for the vampires.
The mystery, with a forgettable killer whose most serious threat against the hero is slashing his tires, gets buried in the coming-of-age story. If you want to spend 700 pages revisiting the normal yet fraught rituals of adolescent romance, though, here’s your chance.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-227024-5
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.
In Archie Goodwin's 15th adventure since the death of his creator, Rex Stout, his gossipy Aunt Edna Wainwright lures him from 34th Street to his carefully unnamed hometown in Ohio to investigate the death of a well-hated bank president.
Tom Blankenship, the local police chief, thinks there’s no case since Logan Mulgrew shot himself. But Archie’s mother, Marjorie Goodwin, and Aunt Edna know lots of people with reason to have killed him. Mulgrew drove rival banker Charles Purcell out of business, forcing Purcell to get work as an auto mechanic, and foreclosed on dairy farmer Harold Mapes’ spread. Lester Newman is convinced that Mulgrew murdered his ailing wife, Lester’s sister, so that he could romance her nurse, Carrie Yeager. And Donna Newman, Lester’s granddaughter, might have had an eye on her great-uncle’s substantial estate. Nor is Archie limited to mulling over his relatives’ gossip, for Trumpet reporter Verna Kay Padgett, whose apartment window was shot out the night her column raised questions about the alleged suicide, is perfectly willing to publish a floridly actionable summary of the leading suspects that delights her editor, shocks Archie, and infuriates everyone else. The one person missing is Archie’s boss, Nero Wolfe (Death of an Art Collector, 2019, etc.), and fans will breathe a sigh of relief when he appears at Marjorie’s door, debriefs Archie, notices a telltale clue, prepares dinner for everyone, sleeps on his discovery, and arranges a meeting of all parties in Marjorie’s living room in which he names the killer.
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5988-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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