A fine mystery whose mordant humor makes it outstanding.
A killing in a retirement home poses quite a problem for a resident who’s a former serial killer.
Carol Quinn was convicted of seven murders, although there might have been some that slipped through the cracks. Now 75, she’s lost the urge to kill and been released from prison, moving into Sheldon Oaks, a posh retirement home near London’s Hampstead Heath. Since only Giles Temple, the owner of Sheldon Oaks, and Elisa, the concierge, know of Carol’s past, she’s able to make friends by joining activities like the baking club, where she and the charming and erudite Margaret do most of the work while Desmond, Geoffrey, and Catherine mostly look on and enjoy the final products. After a while, Geoffrey, a former police officer, develops a nagging feeling he recognizes Carol from somewhere, and finally recalls where. He tells Margaret, who just happens to be a former home secretary, and they inform Catherine, a pathologist. Carol is an intelligent and likable character, but now that her lovely new friends know about her past, they avoid her, upsetting her no end. Then, while she’s sitting on her balcony one day, a body plummets from the roof. It’s Desmond, and Carol—against her own interests—insists he was the victim of a murder. As an experienced killer herself, Carol is perfectly placed to investigate. All she wants is a peaceful retirement, but the fickle finger of fate has a strange sense of humor. Geoffrey thinks Carol probably killed Desmond, but she’s willing to join the club her former friends set up to investigate the murder, in which they all have expertise to offer. A little digging shows there were plenty of people with motive to kill Desmond, but given her record, Carol knows she’ll end up back in prison if she doesn’t prove herself innocent. The group is loath to trust her, but cooperation may be the key to solving the crime.
A fine mystery whose mordant humor makes it outstanding.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2026
ISBN: 9798217189052
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.
A sequel to The Grey Wolf (2024) that begins with the earlier novel’s last line: “We have a problem.” And what a problem it is.
Now that Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his allies in and out of the Sûreté du Québec have saved Canada’s water supply from poisoning on a grand scale, you might think they were entitled to some rest and relaxation in Three Pines. No such luck. Don Joseph Moretti, the Sixth Family head who ordered the hit-and-run on biologist Charles Langlois that nearly killed Gamache as well, is plotting still more criminal enterprises, and Gamache can’t be sure that Chief Inspector Evelyn Tardiff, who’s been cozying up to Moretti in order to get the goods on him, hasn’t gone over to the dark side herself. In fact, Gamache’s uncertainty about Evelyn sets the pattern for much of what follows, for another review of one of Langlois’ notebooks reveals a plot so monstrous that it’s impossible to be sure who’s not in on it. Is it really true, as paranoid online rumors have it, that “Canada is about to attack the U.S.”? Or is it really the other way around, as the discovery of War Plan Red would have it? As the threats loom larger and larger, they raise questions as to whether the Black Wolf, the evil power behind them, is Moretti, disgraced former Deputy Prime Minister Marcus Lauzon, whom Gamache has arranged to have released from prison, or someone even more highly placed. A brief introductory note dating Penny’s delivery of the uncannily prophetic manuscript to September 2024 will do little to assuage the anxieties of concerned readers.
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250328175
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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