by Francine Mathews ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 6, 2017
After a long hiatus, Mathews returns to Nantucket (Death in a Cold Hard Light, 1999, etc.) with this twisty tale of family...
A police officer’s wedding plans are complicated by a death in one of Nantucket’s most prominent families.
Meredith Folger, who comes from a long line of Nantucket police officers, is about to marry wealthy Peter Mason, whom she’s known forever. Shortly before the happy event, her father and grandfather run into famous foreign correspondent Spence Murphy at the Wharf Rat Club and realize his memory is failing when he doesn’t remember that his adopted daughter, Nora, has been staying with him at the family home. When Spence’s son Elliot, and his partner, Andre Henrissaint, arrive, the housekeeper tells them Nora’s been there but adds that she hasn’t seen her in more than a month. Soon thereafter, McTavish, Elliot’s Westie, leads them to the roof walk, where they find Nora’s badly decomposed body. Spence’s other son, David, a Boston attorney, brings fresh problems when he arrives with Laney, the daughter who’s lived with him ever since his bitter divorce from Kate, her mother. Nora seems to have died from drinking coffee laced with apricot seeds that Laney had provided in the hopes of curing her now-deceased grandmother, who had been suffering from cancer. Was Nora's death accident, suicide, or murder? A book Nora had been writing charges that Spence invented the story of imprisonment and escape from Cambodia that made him rich and famous. David, cold and bitter, wants Laney to stay on and take care of Spence until he dies and they can sell everything to settle the estate. Elliot, who’s passionate about the family home, wants to keep it but can’t afford to buy out David. When Spence becomes the next victim and a new will names Kate as trustee, the family implodes, leaving Meredith the tricky job of identifying which relative turned to murder.
After a long hiatus, Mathews returns to Nantucket (Death in a Cold Hard Light, 1999, etc.) with this twisty tale of family relationships gone bad.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61695-737-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
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by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
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
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by C.J. Box ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 28, 2015
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
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 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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