An exhilarating, page-turning blend of mystery, detection, romance, and people-versus-the-elements.
A wedding, a hurricane, and a murder combine in a breathtaking mélange.
Little do Nantucket police officer Meredith Folger and her fiance, Peter Mason (Death on Nantucket, 2017, etc.), know that their last-minute wedding plans are soon to go awry. Since cold, distant new police chief Bob Pocock cuts Merry no slack, she’s working until the last minute. Dionis Mather and her father, Jack, have a family business taking care of the denizens of Tuckernuck, a small private island off the grid, who are completely dependent on the Mathers’ boats to ferry them and all their supplies from nearby Nantucket. When a hurricane is forecast, Dionis and Jack mobilize to help the few still left on the island in September board up their houses and leave for Nantucket before the storm strikes. The only flies in the ointment are entitled NFL quarterback Todd Benson and his supermodel wife, who have nothing to do with the rest of the islanders, most of whose houses have been handed down through generations. Although the Bensons are not at their recently built mansion, they’ve left two horses and their stable girl, Mandy, without any plans for their safety. Mandy turns up as the Mathers are evacuating the last people, demanding a seat on the boat and refusing to stay with the horses. As the Category 3 storm approaches, Dionis sees and reports a distress rocket off Tuckernuck to the Coast Guard. Jack suffers a heart attack, and she promises him she’ll return and help those horses. The Coast Guard sends a chopper to a grounded yacht, where they find two people badly wounded. The woman dies on the way to the hospital, and the man’s head wound renders him unable to answer questions, giving Merry a possible murder to solve. Dionis ends up marooned on Tuckernuck at the height of the storm, caring for both horses and a man with a bullet wound. Can Merry work out the relations among all these doings before her wedding day?
An exhilarating, page-turning blend of mystery, detection, romance, and people-versus-the-elements.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61695-993-7
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
A chilling story set under a blistering sun, this fine debut will keep readers on edge and awake long past bedtime.
A mystery that starts with a sad homecoming quickly turns into a nail-biting thriller about family, friends, and forensic accounting.
Federal agent Aaron Falk is called back to his rural Australian hometown for the funeral of his best friend, Luke, who apparently committed suicide after killing his wife and 6-year-old son; he’s also called to reckon with his own past. Falk and his father were run out of town when he was accused of killing his girlfriend. Luke gave him an alibi, but more than one person in town knows he was lying. When Luke’s parents ask Falk to find the truth, long-buried secrets begin to surface. Debut author Harper plots this novel with laser precision, keeping suspects in play while dropping in flashbacks that offer readers a full understanding of what really happened. The setting adds layers of meaning. Kiewarra is suffering an epic drought, and Luke’s suicide could easily be explained by the failure of his farm. The risk of wildfire, especially in a broken community rife with poverty and alcoholism, keeps nerves strung taut. Falk's focus as an investigator is on following the money; nobody in town really understands his job, but his phone number turns up on a scrap of paper belonging to Luke’s late wife, a woman he’d never met. The question throughout is whether Luke’s death is something a CSI of spreadsheets can unravel or if it’s a matter of bad blood from times past finally having reached the boiling point. Falk struggles to separate the two and let his own old grudges go. A fellow investigator chastises him: “You’re staring so hard at the past that it’s blinding you.”
A chilling story set under a blistering sun, this fine debut will keep readers on edge and awake long past bedtime.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-10560-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
Though the pace lags at times, the characters are richly detailed and true to life, and the ending is sure to please fans.
A Seattle homicide detective is thrust back into a painfully personal case when the remains of her 20-years-vanished younger sister are uncovered in a shallow grave near Cedar Grove, the Washington mountain town where they grew up.
Forty-two-year-old Tracy Crosswhite has long felt responsible for what happened the night her goofy, fun-loving sister, Sarah, disappeared. Former lawyer Dugoni (The Conviction, 2012, etc.) retells the events of that evening in flashback, recounting how, upon leaving a shooting championship, Tracy asked Sarah to drive her truck back to Cedar Grove during a storm so Tracy and her boyfriend could make it to their romantic dinner reservation. The next morning, the empty truck was discovered on a county road with Sarah nowhere to be found, and her disappearance turned both the Crosswhite family and the town itself upside down. As Tracy's engagement fell apart and her parents lost themselves to grief, Tracy found herself doubting the legality of the trial that eventually put local oddball Edmund House in prison for Sarah's apparent murder. Now, with the fresh evidence of her sister's remains in her arsenal, Tracy seizes the opportunity to reinvestigate Sarah's fate—and the possible conspiracy she believes led a man to get convicted for a crime he didn't commit. The majority of the book centers on Tracy's quest to uncover the truth and secure a new trial for House. Though the book is well-written and its classic premise is sure to absorb legal-thriller fans, it grows a bit plodding at times, with too many pages dedicated to House's retrial.
Though the pace lags at times, the characters are richly detailed and true to life, and the ending is sure to please fans.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4778-2557-0
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
