Layers and layers of unlovely revelations about people who seemed perfectly nice.
The disappearance of a well-liked pensioner places all the other problems of the aspiring resort town of Ebbing in an unsettling new context.
Charlie Perry, whose ex-model wife, Pauline, talked him into buying the money pit Tall Trees, is worried because his expenses have left him deeply in debt to Wadham Manor, the posh care home where his daughter, Birdie Nightingale, has been housed ever since a botched burglary left her boyfriend dead and her blind and brain-damaged. Housecleaner Dee Eastwood is grieving the loss of her elder brother, Phil Golding, who was found dead in a park three weeks ago. Dave Harman, landlord of the Neptune pub, is angry that newcomer Pete Diamond is sponsoring a music festival that will bring all manner of riffraff into the quiet town. DI Elise King, still on sick leave after her cancer surgery, wonders when she’ll feel herself again. All these troubles get shunted aside when Pauline reports that Charlie’s gone missing. By the time Elise finds him dead, she’s already accepted retired librarian Ronnie Durrant’s invitation to poke around a little. Given what Elise has already discovered, it makes perfect sense for DCI Graham McBride to call her back to the Major Crime Team ahead of schedule and to appoint her senior investigating officer when DI Hugh Ward, the long-term live-in who dumped her, goes on sick leave after he’s dumped in turn by his fiancee. Barton presents such an embarrassment of riches that the tale has almost run its course before the coppers have a chance to sit down with Stuart Bennett, the just-freed burglar who attacked Birdie.
Layers and layers of unlovely revelations about people who seemed perfectly nice.Pub Date: June 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-98480-304-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
The lavish food descriptions and appended recipes are the best parts of this anemic mystery.
Christmas is coming, but so is trouble for South Lick, Indiana.
Robbie Jordan, owner and chief cook at Pans ’N Pancakes, returns from solving a murder in California just in time for the holiday rush, which is complicated more than most Christmastimes by a number of surprises that disrupt her circle of friends. First, her assistant, Danna Beedle, gets a visit from Marcus Vandemere, a young biracial man claiming to be her half brother, an assertion that thrills Danna despite the doubts of some friends and relatives. Next comes a fire that nearly destroys the home of anesthesiologist Dr. William Geller, a racist whose wife, Tina, reportedly left him years ago. When a skeleton turns up in the attic, the not-so-esteemed doctor has some explaining to do. Robbie’s nemesis, Detective Octavia Slade, who recently married Robbie’s former boyfriend, is more willing than usual to accept help from Robbie, who has a knack for finding things out. The next to die is Tina’s twin, Toni, who knew Marcus from karate classes. Toni’s husband is the prime suspect, but Robbie’s convinced the fatalities are connected. With help from her boyfriend and her network of friends, she attempts to clear things up before the killer spoils her holiday by adding her to his list.
The lavish food descriptions and appended recipes are the best parts of this anemic mystery.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2317-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
The perfect antidote for anyone who doomscrolls daily headlines: more crazed, rollicking, sharply written sendups like this.
Florida’s preeminent satirist returns to the fray with a worm’s-eye view of MAGA World.
In his time off from packaging Dream Booty sex dolls for Bottom Drawer Novelties, Dale Figgo does his patriotic best to save the nation by hurling plastic bags weighted with sand and filled with antisemitic epithets onto the lawns of gated communities. The disapproving tenant in his extra bedroom, Viva Morales, works as "wealth director" for the Mink Foundation, a nothingburger position that would bother her a lot more if she knew the fate of Rachel Cohen, the predecessor who uncovered some secret details that cofounders Claude and Electra Mink wanted to keep secret. Congressional Representative Clure Boyette, in the middle of what should be an easy reelection campaign and a much tougher divorce from his wife, Nicki, who’s collected abundant evidence of his infidelities, wants the Minks to fund Wee Hammers, which is just like Habitat for Humanity except that the habitats are built by child labor. Figgo and his best friend, white supremacist Jonas Onus, have a serious falling out over the demand by Clure’s father, kingmaker Clay Boyette, that Figgo accept Onus as an equal partner in Strokers for Liberty, the organization of lunatic activists he’s founded, and a calamitous demonstration at a gay bar in Key West. It all sounds so busy, dizzy, and fizzy that it makes perfect sense when Janice Eileen Smith, who in her role as Galaxy is Clure’s mistress in every sense of the word, breaks away from him, bonds with Viva, and starts her own counterplot, just like every other member of the cast.
The perfect antidote for anyone who doomscrolls daily headlines: more crazed, rollicking, sharply written sendups like this.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780593320945
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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