by Faye Kellerman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 6, 2013
Except for the snappy dialogue and excellent grasp of police procedure, this Kellerman vehicle has little to redeem the...
Kellerman puts her LAPD detectives to the test in a most unusual outing, even by West Coast standards.
Although billed as another Decker/Lazarus novel, Kellerman’s story is less about them and more about the detective team of Marge Dunn and Scott Oliver, who work with Decker. Decker’s wife, the Lazarus of the pair, plays a peripheral and virtually negligible role in this story, which limps along on a very silly premise. When neighbors in an ordinary apartment complex complain, responding police find what they believe to be a big cat and some very bad smells coming from one of the apartments. After breaking in, they discover the decaying body of a reclusive multimillionaire, guarded by his Siberian tiger. But that’s not all they uncover; as the mystery deepens, they discern that their dead man suffered from both a bashed-in head and a gunshot wound. In addition to being doubly dead, he was also doubly eccentric in a not-so-good way, as the detective team finds when they delve into Hobart Penny’s personal life. An ex-wife, a couple of grown children, a wildlife sanctuary director, prissy next-door neighbors, a belligerent super and assorted ladies of ill-repute add to the growing list of suspects in the case. In the meantime, the author supplements the murder with a side story that grew out of her previous work and involves a gifted, musical teen who has become Decker’s foster son and the love the boy has for a girl he can’t possess. The sappy romance adds nothing to the storyline, and Kellerman’s main tale, with lions and tigers and bears, is often so silly that readers will have to suspend their incredulity in order to go the distance.
Except for the snappy dialogue and excellent grasp of police procedure, this Kellerman vehicle has little to redeem the hard-to-swallow plot, extraneous and unremarkable love story, and odd fashion minutia, which seems designed to function mainly as page filler.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-212175-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
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by J.A. Jance ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2019
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
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New York Times Bestseller
A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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by Lorna Barrett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 13, 2019
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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