A compelling tale of the Chicago World’s Fair, complete with history, mystery and a likable heroine.
Against the backdrop of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, McNamara deftly weaves themes of Southern honor, Northern political graft, post-Civil War abolitionist concerns, nascent women’s suffrage and tangled familial relationships. Emily Cabot, a graduate student of sociology at the University of Chicago, and her Boston-based family visit the Fair accompanied by her professor, Dr. Chapman. A chance meeting with Emily’s classmate Clara, and her family and friends from Kentucky, reveals Dr. Chapman’s past romantic involvement with a Mrs. Larrimer, now the wife of a powerful Southern cotton dealer. When Mr. Larrimer is killed, all evidence points to Dr. Chapman–or does it? Emily’s conviction in his innocence leads to detective work ranging from high tea in frills to finagling audiences with members of the powerful Chicago political machine and finally to donning boy’s clothing and spying on a covert gambling session on the Midway. In addition to solid pacing and engaging storytelling, the plot incorporates historical figures like Frederick Douglass, Mayor Carter Harrison and Eugene Prendergast, nicely balancing historical exposition with narrative drive. Racial relations under Reconstruction come alive as Emily discovers the secret in Larrimer’s past and requests the help of Ida B. Wells and her editor husband F. L. Barnett. Emily’s own precarious position as a female graduate student involved in a scandal results in an examination of social mores and gender double standards. Although the White City of the Fair and the dingy, corrupt city of Chicago offer strong settings for an engaging tale, grammatical rough spots of run-on sentences, comma misuse and inconsistent spelling often slow the story. With an eye to her readership, McNamara includes a historical epilogue, bibliography and reading group discussion questions, as well as the first ten pages of the next Emily Cabot book, Death at Hull House.
An energetic story of politics, racism and murder set against the whirl of the White City.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4392-0618-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | HISTORICAL MYSTERY
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
Categories: GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE
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